


in spring we light our fires

by vivacissimo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aerys Is His Own Warning, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Consensual Infidelity, Dubious Morality, Eventual Ethical Nonmonogamy, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Female Rhaegar Targaryen, Infidelity, Princess Rhaegar Targaryen, Slow Burn, Treason, oberyn's only crime is being too good at sex, r/l begins later, tragic brandon/ashara
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26447647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivacissimo/pseuds/vivacissimo
Summary: Rhaegar Targaryen is born a Princess, raised between a prophecy and grief, and declared her father's heir when no other Targaryen child lives to adulthood. After Duskendale, Aerys descends into madness, swearing the man meant to be Rhaegar's husband into the Kingsguard — thereby thrusting her into a marriage she never expected, and a treasonous scheme she never wished for.When both of her children come into the world looking Dornish, and Lady Lyanna Stark arrives in King's Landing to serve as her lady as well as her shield, a chain of events is set off that even a Crown Princess may not survive.
Relationships: Arthur Dayne/Rhaegar Targaryen, Lyanna Stark/Rhaegar Targaryen, Oberyn Martell/Rhaegar Targaryen
Comments: 32
Kudos: 70





	1. Dragonstone

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i am not genderbending in order to make relationships that would canonically be homosexual into heterosexual ones. i am queer myself, and ofc all of these pairings listed are more interesting in their original m/m format. nonetheless, i had this idea and thought it would be interesting to write out. so here we are!

Oberyn cocks an eyebrow at her from where he lies abed, shamelessly naked, modesty hardly covered by a bronze-dyed silk sheet. The damp scent of sex hangs oppressively in the air, entangled with the heavy musk of the Dornish prince himself. An overbearing silence hangs between them, but the man does not break her gaze. No, he will not, because he is no weakling. It is her who must act first.

“Get dressed and gone, woman,” Princess Rhaegar seethes, not sparing a glance at the _whore_ cowering on her husband’s bed. The woman does so, and the princess is pleased to see, from the corner of her eye, that she shakes like a leaf in the wind. Good. That means she need not make any threats. Doing so, acting the part of the jilted wife, is distasteful, and beneath her. Even if she is a jilted wife.

Of course, the woman will be dismissed from whatever service she is employed in. Dragonstone does not hide anything from it’s liege. Their loyalty was hard-won, and it does not fade. For now, though, Rhaegar would speak to this philandering, lying husband of hers. _Alone._

When the heavy stone doors shut behind her, Oberyn sits up, but makes no move to make himself decent. Why would he? He has no sense of decency, not even an inkling, this she already knows so she is not surprised. 

“Does aught ail you, wife?” he asks calmly, head tilted curiously, that infuriating Dornish drawl enraging yet calming at the same time. _It reminds me of another, is all,_ she insists to herself.

“Yes, much and more,” she replies, voice deadly calm, “your inability to keep your cock in your breeches, for one.” Oberyn has the audacity to _laugh._ He finds something amusing, evidently.

“Jealousy does not become you, Princess,” he smirks, and stands from the bed. He is, of course, utterly naked, and she purposely looks away. He is a handsome and sculpted man, but he is also ripe with the red of recent lovemaking, and any desire the sight of his hard body might inspire is destroyed by such knowledge.

It was not lovemaking, she thinks to herself viciously. For Prince Oberyn loves none but himself.

“Just for you, dear wife, I have put my cock in my breeches,” he says, breath hot against her face. She wrinkles her nose, but turns to him nonetheless. They are nearly of a height, so she is looking directly into his eyes.

He puts his hand to her, sprawling his palm across her stomach. The heat of him is almost comforting, and she wants to move away to retain her rage. At least long enough to truly tell him how disgusted she is, but she can not deny him this contact. Whatever passes between them, now and forever, she promised herself that she will never deny him this. She puts her hands on her ribs - the only place they are comfortable as of late.

“What ails you, Princess?” he repeats his question from earlier, searching her face for any signs of distress.

“Nothing beyond the usual,” she says, feeling suddenly tired. She will take her letters and correspondences to her rooms after this, she thinks, and read them in bed. “I simply wished to tell you that the babe has turned over. The Maester says that happens when the birth is near.”

She does not miss the hint of joy that appears on his face. _The quicker the babe comes, the quicker House Martell can kill us all off and claim the Iron Throne for themselves,_ she muses, and nearly laughs out loud.

“That is good to hear,” he murmurs, eyes on the bump between them, the one he rubs in soothing circles. The traitorous babe always enjoys it’s father close, and stops it’s infernal shifting inside of her. 

“Yes, very much so,” she responds, stepping away from him and letting his hands fall back to his sides. He closes the gap, looking at her face again.

“Is there anything I might provide you? You must be in discomfort. It is my duty to assist,” he asks, bordering on genuineness in his tone. She shakes her head.

See, she might just have let him. She might have allowed him to rub her back, or read to her from a tome, or cut soft fruits for her at her bedside, easy chatter falling between them. Perhaps he could have penned her letters, and they would have discussed matters of state. Her husband was quite sharp, after all. But of course, he just had to use the word _duty._ Every tiny particle that passes between them is simply duty to him. Now she wishes to be gone from these rooms. “I find myself tired, husband. I will take to my bed for some time, I believe.”

He persists, gesturing to the largest piece of furniture in the room. “You might rest here. I have a perfectly comfortable featherbed. It would spare you a walk.”

She has to catch herself before she bares her fucking teeth at him. She means to speak with venom, but even to her own ears, she knows she simply sounds sorrowful. “The bed of pleasure you dishonor our marriage in without care? I think not.”

That deflates his sudden chivalry. Oberyn has the decency to not argue with her, his face carefully neutral. “I will walk you to your chambers, then.”

“No need,” she replies, turning to wobble towards the door, her pregnancy belly an utter nuisance at this point, “Ser Arthur will help me.”

There is an elongated pause before he replies, “of course, Princess. He is the most gallant knight.” There is no emotion in Oberyn’s tone, although there is clearly a second meaning to his words. She tires of his word games. Normally she is eager to battle at wits, but today she wishes to rest.

“Indeed, he is. Good day, my Prince.”  
.  
.  
.

Arthur does end up helping her to her chambers. In fact, when a hard kick at her ribs jolts her into a stumble, he whisks her into a bridal carry, the same carry he held her in when she was actually a bride, racing her away from the indignities of the bedding ceremony. He closes the distance to her rooms, laying her in bed himself, leaning her against the headboard.

“Thank you, Arthur,” she says drowsily, holding onto his arm for balance, “might you sit with me?”

“Of course, Princess,” he dutifully responds. On Dragonstone, he does not wear the armor of the Kingsguard, rather a plain black tunic and breeches and a shirt of chain on top of it. It would stop a kitchen knife and not much more, she thinks bemusedly, and tells him her thoughts.

“It is symbolic,” he protests, and they laugh together.

They fall into silence, and she is struck with sudden despair. That has happened many times in her pregnancy. Arthur has guided her through several episodes when she has trouble finding her words, or bursts out crying for no reason whatsoever. 

“Oh, Arthur,” she whispers, and sobs, sitting up in her bed. She holds out her arms like a child, and he does not make her wait long before enveloping her in his muscled arms, allowing her to spend her tears on the chain she had just made fun of.

When she has quieted, their embrace continues. _He has always loved to be close to me,_ she thinks, near hysterically, _and I have denied us this respite for what? That I might go to my marriage bed a maiden? If I could go back, I would not have done so._

“It was ill-done, Prince Oberyn and that girl,” he interrupts her thoughts. She leans back so that she can look him in his earnest eyes. They’re more purple than her own.

“Perhaps, but no more ill-done than many of my own deeds,” she whispers, backing away and lying down on her many, many pillows.

Rhaegar was an austere Princess prior to her pregnancy, taking no luxuries for the sake of it. She took a certain pleasure in the simplicity of her lifestyle. Now she aches in places she did not even realize existed before. The pillows are an accommodation, a necessary evil.

“You are not unfaithful to your lawfully wedded husband,” Arthur softly disagrees. He knows she has a habit of blaming herself for anything that goes wrong, and he responds accordingly, petting her hair with an ungloved hand. Rhaegar regards his handsome face, the one full of concern for her. She has been looking upon this face since they were but children, upon his smooth olive skin and his piercing eyes, even when it hurt like all Seven Hells to see him. Even when he donned a white cloak instead of placing one of marriage on her shoulders.

“No,” she speaks slowly, resigned, “ in that I do not fuck other men. But I love another man nonetheless.”

She turns to her side then, burying her face in the pillows. She hears him sigh when it is evident that she will not turn back around to him, for this is an old argument and there is nothing left to say. He resumes petting her hair for a time, withdrawing when there is a knock on the door. It is food, from the kitchens. She has had most of her meals in her room the past week, the fatigue affecting her more than ever.

“Leave it by the side,” she dismisses him, “along with my letters from my desk, please. I would be alone for a few hours, Arthur.”

“Of course, Princess,” he replies, and does as he is bid. 

There was a time when this heaviness did not exist between then. When they exchanged words of love with great dreams and innocence, without an inkling of pain. He had been brilliant in swordplay, Prince Lewyn’s own squire, but not yet as brilliant as he was today. Dawn was still his greatest desire. 

_Dawn,_ he had shyly confessed to Rhaegar, _and you, Princess._

And why not, she had thought? She was the Crown Princess, the only Targaryen heir to survive childhood, and so she would need to wed a man who would not threaten her position or impose his will upon her. She trusted Arthur with her life, and her heart. Aerys himself agreed, for Gods’ sake.

When Arthur returned to Court from Dorne, five and ten and freshly knighted, they had kissed for the first time. It had been at his initiation - once he saw her, alone in the garden, he simply could not wait any longer, he exclaimed. He’d caressed her face and joined their mouths together, seeming practiced. He told her later that he had kissed several girls before, and even taken a woman, the evening he received his knighthood. He had admitted this apologetically, expecting her to be upset, indeed, appearing upset with himself. But in the moment, she’d known nothing of it, and had wrapped her arms around his neck and carded a hand through his silken curls instead.

They had continued to kiss in secret, and even done more, youthful explorations clumsy and sweet. The day Arthur had taken his mouth to her cunt for the first time, concealed in the Godswood of the Red Keep that precisely no one frequented, had been the day her father was imprisoned at Duskendale. He had taken her mind off the pain, and given her the strength to act as Princess Regent. 

_And she had done well._ More than well, in truth. The King of all Seven Kingdoms was a hostage, House Targaryen consisted of four members, and she was still half a girl in the eyes of the realm. But she had successfully ended a feud between the Tyrells and the Crown that Aerys had begun, opening the Roseroad to bring much-needed food into the city, which the smallfolk loved her for. She had worked with the Citadel, sponsoring traveling maesters who taught the common folk the healing arts without having to forge any chains. She had worked day and night, educating herself on the tax code, so that she might cancel those that were overly burdensome to the Lords, and institute others involving areas previously not thought of. Lord Tywin himself was impressed, and had told her so with a strange look in his eye, as if he had not considered her in his ever-shifting calculations on where the realm's power lay. She had hoped her father would be pleased upon his return, that he might turn his face to her with a respect he never showed anyone except Tywin or perhaps Ser Gerold, in increasingly rare moments. 

She had never expected the creature that came back. But even when she had ample evidence of his madness, she had not truly _understood_. Not until she was summoned to the throne room, where Arthur was kneeling in resplendent steel, a white cloak hanging in Ser Gerold’s arms, did she realize.

 _Father_ , she had pleaded, she had begged, _please do not do this._ But it was already done. Arthur had sworn the oath before she ever stepped in the room.

For the first time in perhaps her entire life, Rhaegar exploded in fury. Not in front of Aerys, of course. In her rooms, she uncovered every object either Arthur or Aerys had ever given her, every sweet letter, every childish bauble she’d saved. There weren’t many, and each one held deep meaning to her. She wanted to burn them, or throw it all away. But, at the last minute, she could not bring herself to destroy the remnants of Arthur’s love for her. All her life, she’d believed she was destined for a greater purpose, and so she often acted beyond her years. The crown would fall to her, and the Prince that was Promised would be born to her, she was sure of it. But that day, she was simply a girl of eight and ten, who’d had something precious ripped away from her.

Perhaps it would have been better if Arthur had been ripped away. Instead, he stalked her in silence day in and day out, hardly ever opening his mouth, assigned personally to her by Aerys himself. His gaze was heavy on her back. She did not refuse him her eyes, but she did refuse him her words. They were always together, but they never spoke.

It was not until they passed Summerhall on their way to Sunspear for her wedding negotiations that their silence was broken. He apologized a hundred times, begging her forgiveness in a thousand different manners. He gave her no explanations for his choice - to make a name for himself, for the glory of House Dayne, for some promise of favor from the King, were the only possible conclusions she could come to - but what was done was done, and so they agreed to move forward with kindness, lest they repeat the mistakes of Rhaenyra Targaryen and Criston Cole. It had taken much time, but eventually a companionship bloomed between them. If there was heat or longing in their eyes, if when they touched electricity flowed through every corner of their bodies, if they spoke of things they told no other living person of, then so be it.

Instead of Arthur’s steady hands and talented tongue, it was Prince Oberyn who took her maidenhead, on their wedding night. She fucked him like she had imagined she would Arthur upon their union. Lovingly, and completely. Her heart was left open and Oberyn had been fascinated by her, she knew in the way that women always could. Oberyn had professed surprise when he saw her maiden’s blood on the sheets. _I had thought...well I had been told, that you and-_ she had cut him off there. _No, my Prince. There has only been you._ The Red Viper had smiled at her from under hooded eyes, and shown her that he knew how to use his mouth, too. It seemed all Dornishmen shared such a taste. She allowed herself a few tears then, for her new husband was not looking, and she could not stop herself. It served only to increase her pleasure.

Aerys was increasingly cruel, and had ordered Arthur to guard the door that consummation night. Her knight’s eyes were red-rimmed the next morning. So were hers. Her husband was unabashedly curious about her in the light of day, and they spent the beginning of their marriage holed up in the library, debating history and philosophy. Mercifully, Arthur had been granted leave to visit Starfall, and so for the next few weeks Rhaegar and Oberyn played at building familiarity, bedding often and well. Those were their happiest times.

It had all gone wrong once they returned to King’s Landing, of course. But such memories weighed too heavily for her to dwell on. Rhaenys had been conceived after an explosive argument, blood running hot in every direction, and Oberyn had taken her bent over the bed, the passion in such a coupling startling, but not necessarily unwelcome. She had been alone again when she woke up, and following the discovery of the pregnancy, her husband had not touched her. Only once they came to Dragonstone for the final term of her pregnancy had the bitterness in the Martell Prince begun to fade away, leaving instead a tentative truce between the two spouses. But it was too late to return to the sweetness of those first few weeks. 

Rhaegar placed the final letter on the dresser, shedding her dress down to a shift black as night, satin and slippery as befitting her station, one of her favorites, and made her way to bed. Her head was aching, and she required respite.

When she woke up again, her delicate, beautiful shift was ruined. Her stomach was clenched so tight she had to double over, gasping for breath. The babe was coming, she recognized dimly, as she screamed for the maester.  
.  
.  
.

“Princess,” an urgent sounding voice forced its way into the forefront of Rhaegar’s admittedly drowsy mind.

“I’m awake,” she mumbled, before being wracked by a wave of pain. “Fuck!”

“Yes, that’s good, stay with me now,” that same person said. Her eyes snapped open once the pain had faded mildly. She knew that voice…

“Oberyn?” she gasped, then winced. So much was happening at once, and she could not stop the crests and waves of pain. She had not spent much time in the company of women, admittedly, and even less spent speaking of the childbed, and now she was absolutely drowning in it. 

“Yes, Princess,” Oberyn said, voice shaky. Rhaegar had never heard her husband speak thus, and strained to see his face.

 _I’m holding his hand quite tightly,_ she thought, deliriously, only realizing it when she saw it in front of her. _It must be hurting._ He didn’t seem to care, eyes blown wide, the alarm on his face almost scaring her.

“You are giving birth now,” he told her, as if she could not feel it happening, and she snapped at him, “I _know_ that.”

“It’s been ten hours,” he said, and those words, spoken as if they held significance, frightened her. Was that too long? She thought it might be, but her mother had always gone even longer, with the exception of with her. But then, all those other babes had died, discounting Viserys. She did not know what to make of this. Her breathing was becoming short, and her vision more unfocused than before. 

“ _Princess_ ,” Oberyn spoke forcefully, and she snapped her head up. “You need to focus now. The maester needs you to push the babe out.”

She feels a rising panic, one she hasn’t experienced in ages. She is a level-headed person. She has to be, considering. But she also belongs to a line from which many women have died in childbirth, and now she has the same task in front of her. The dragon must have three heads, but what if she fails? If she fails everyone and everything she knows is surely doomed.

“Rhaegar,” Oberyn speaks again, more softly than she has heard in some time, “Princess, look at me.” She does her best to do so. “You are one of the strongest people I know, and I say this as a Martell of Dorne. You will not fail, I swear it. You will bring our child into the world, but you must push now!”

Rhaegar hangs on his every word. All that exists is this babe, and the babe’s parents who now need to bring them into this world. She must push, she _must_. “Do not leave me,” she hears herself say, desperately, and Oberyn nods tightly.

“I will not, Princess.” He holds her hand even tighter, if possible. She closes her eyes then, and grits her teeth, and pushes with every fiber of strength left to her. She knows she is screaming, and crying, and gasping for air, but Oberyn keeps to his word no matter how afraid she is that he will go away. There is the maester and the midwife but they are like phantoms to her, speaking only to Oberyn.

“You are almost there,” Oberyn urges her on, and with one last mighty heave, Rhaegar collapses, spent.

The small cry of an infant is greater than the loudest of thunder.

“Princess…” Oberyn says, while she lolls her head in the direction of the child.

“A girl, Your Graces,” the maester says. The squirming babe is in his hands, covered in blood and other fluids that kept her alive while she was in the womb. Rhaegar wants, no, Rhaegar needs to touch her.

“I wish to hold her,” she says, voice wobbling as if she is inebriated. 

“They must clean the babe first,” Oberyn assures her, smoothing her sweat-soaked hair back away from her face. He wets a towel, and touches it to her face, which she only now realizes is burning warm. She asks him if she has a fever, if she is sick? Sometimes, even after the child is born, women die of some fever.

“No, Princess,” he responds, “you are merely overly warm. The midwife says it is normal.” He smiles then, a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes. There is no guile, or resentment, or hidden emotions in his expression. 

“You are happy,” she observes, and feels a smile of her own stretch across her face. Everything might hurt, or ache, or have gone completely numb, but there is a daughter between them now. 

“I am happier than I have ever been,” Oberyn admits, with what Rhaegar believes is pure honesty. 

“Your Graces,” the maester interrupts, “pardon me, but might the Prince exit the room for a time, that we might attend to the Princess? There is still work for us to do, and the mother usually prefers to do so with some privacy.”

Oberyn does not answer, looking to her for her decision.

“Will it be long?” she asks, touching her consort’s hand again. He rubs his thumb over her knuckles in comfort.

“No, Princess, there is only the matter of the after birth to come, and cleaning of yourself and the bedding. By then the babe will be ready to meet yourself and the Prince.”

“That is acceptable,” she says, somewhat reluctantly letting her own slender fingers fall away from the grip of his strong, tanned hand. He brings himself to a height, touching her forehead tenderly. 

“My wife would like to be the first to breastfeed the babe, maester. Please ensure that the wetnurse does not do so before the child is returned to her mother.” Rhaegar had completely forgotten that she had told Oberyn that once, but is grateful, because she does wish for that. The midwife interjects, saying that might make it difficult for the child to latch onto the wetnurse after that, if she has had a taste of her own mother, but Oberyn dismisses her concerns and insists. Once she agrees, he departs, although only to the antechamber.

Maids come in to assist the midwife, and Rhaegar is turned every which way until she is deemed presentable. The after birth had come without issue, and now she is eager to meet her little girl child.

Oberyn returns, following the midwife, who carries a swaddled bundle into the room. Rhaegar strains to see, and unties the front of her shift so that her breasts spill out. When the babe is deposited in her arms, Oberyn sits on the bed directly next to her, and they look upon her little face together.

She is so unbelievably tiny, and her almond shaped eyes are already open wide. The thin dark hair that sits atop her head is fluffy now that it is dry, and her little lips are dusky pink and moving, searching out the first meal of her life.

“She looks just like you,” Rhaegar says, marvelling at the little creature. Oberyn’s finger reaches out to trace her face, and the babe tries to put his finger into her mouth, mistaking it for a breast. When no milk is forthcoming, she releases a thin cry, and the midwife rushes to assist Rhaegar in latching a nipple into her sweet mouth.

Oberyn has been silent thus far, but speaks once the child begins to drink. “Did you wish for her to have the Valyrian features?” 

She shakes her head, but does not look at him. Her daughter has entranced her. “It does not matter. She is hale and healthy. That is all we might ask.”

The answer pleases him, she can tell, and he asks her another question. “What will her name be?” 

They did not truly discuss it, idly passing names together a few times but having come to no true conclusion. If the babe had the Targaryen look, or if she was not the firstborn, then they would have had more freedom to name her according to their own whims. But she is a Martell in appearance, and the heir to the heir for the time being. And she wishes for this girl to be a conciliatory force between Houses Targaryen and Martell, this first of the three heads. The choice is clear.

“Rhaenys,” she softly says, worshipping the name now that it belongs to a babe of her own blood. Oberyn hums, caressing the exposed cheek of his daughter.

“She will do what the first Rhaenys could not,” he says, seeming approving, “she will unite Dorne and the Crown.”

Rhaegar sings a traditional lullaby in High Valyrian to Rhaenys, whispering in her ear words of love, and then hands the babe over to her father. Oberyn carries her around the room, taking her to the window as if she might recognize or appreciate the beauty of the view, promising her his attention and affection for the rest of his days.

“You are a miracle,” he tells the child, who reaches out to grasp the edges of his hair.

He will love her, Rhaegar is relieved. She thought he might resent the child born of their union, after everything, but that isn’t true. He loves Rhaenys already. Rhaegar has loved Rhaenys since she kicked in her womb for the first time, before she knew the babe’s sex, or coloring, or the feeling of her cradled in her arms.

No matter what passed between them, or what comes to pass, they will always have this.  
.  
.  
.

When night falls, Rhaenys is placed in her cradle, and Rhaegar dozes off. The midwife enters each hour to fuss over Rhaenys, inadvertently waking Rhaegar each time. She finds she does not mind, and each time she asks to see Rhaenys, even if just for a moment.

Evidently, the day catches up to her, because when she closed her eyes last it was the deepest darkness outside, and now the first tendrils of the dawn are bathing her chambers in the softest of embers. There is rustling, and Rhaegar sits up to ask the midwife if she might hold Rhaenys for a moment, just to make sure she is real. The past two days scarcely seemed possible.

It isn’t the midwife leaning over the cradle, however. The midwife is a short, plump woman, whose hips block the entirety of her daughter from view. Instead it is tall, broad Arthur who stands there, frozen as he bends over the bedding. Rhaegar can barely make out Rhaenys, but from this angle, it seems as if her daughter is meeting Arthur’s gaze head on.

In another lifetime, she might have had this. In this life, she can barely allow herself to want this. Briefly, Rhaegar wonders if she has the fever after all, and perhaps she is only dreaming. Many of her dreams have felt realer than life.

“Arthur,” she rasps, throat dry. He turns. _So this is not a dream, then._

“Forgive me for waking you, Princess,” he apologizes, his deep voice low so as to not disturb the peace of the morning. “I merely wished to see the child. I will depart now, if you do not need anything.”

Rhaegar does not want him to leave. Perhaps it is dangerous, but this moment...it is too precious to let go of just yet.

“Bring her to me,” she commands softly, “unless she is sleeping.”

“She is not sleeping,” he smiles, turning back towards the babe, “only looking.” He lifts Rhaenys gently, and brings her to Rhaegar with one hand holding her head and the other encasing her body. Rhaenys’s bright eyes delight Rhaegar, and Arthur sits atop the bed next to her.

“Might I have some water?” she requests, and he lifts the glass on the nightstand to her lips so that she does not have to shift the child around at all. Rhaenys begins to make noises, and Rhaegar, from some deep instinct, unties the front of her gown, bringing a breast to the eager little mouth of her daughter in the manner that the midwife taught her.

Only when Rhaenys has closed her eyes, sucking successfully, does Rhaegar remember herself and the position she is in, and she looks over at Arthur to gauge his reaction. He is not ogling the child or her exposed chest, however. He is only gazing softly upon her, the way he sometimes does when they are sitting in an otherwise empty room while she is distracted by some letter, or tome, and thinks she will not see. 

This time she does see, and their eyes meet.

“I was afraid you would mislike her,” she admits, the quiet comfort of the room making her brave. She had feared that Arthur, who has never shown an ounce of dishonorable character, might finally prove to be nothing more than a man after all. To bring such a side out of him would have crushed her irreparably. She could not have forgiven herself.

“Never,” he responded, fire in his tone, “she is yours, and that would have been enough. But she is also the most beautiful little princess. I see you in her face.”

“She has the Martell coloring,” Rhaegar points out, although she agrees that Rhaenys is the most beautiful princess, naturally.

“Yes,” there is some sadness in his face, “and Dorne will be pleased to hear of such a thing. But she has your features.”

Rhaenys moves her mouth away, smacking her little lips together and gurgling happily. The wetnurse will need to soothe her soon, Rhaegar knows that much, and so she should return Rhaenys to her cradle and call the woman in. But she wants to sit like this for a heartbeat longer.

Arthur fastens her nightdress back so that she is covered, ever mindful, and holds his hands out to take Rhaenys, presumably to place her back into her cradle. Instead, Rhaegar makes to get off the bed herself, kicking the sheets away so that her exposed legs glow. Her back is _aching._

He helps her stand, allowing her to lean on him as she makes her way to the cradle, gently laying the priceless bundle down to rest. Rhaenys turns her head in many directions, making indiscernible noises, and holding her arms up and around. 

“I must depart,” Arthur reluctantly speaks into her ear, from where he stands behind her. She leans backwards into his chest, and he places his hands on her upper arms as if to steady her. “I know,” she tells him, equally regretful, reaching backwards to caress his stubbled face. His breath hitches, and then he relaxes into her touch. That she still affects him brings a joy to her heart that she wishes it did not.

He tarries a moment, before ripping himself away. He leans over to kiss her hair once, and lightly bumps Rhaenys on the nose, before making his way from the chamber. Rhaegar lets him go, and when the wetnurse comes in, she knows it was at his request.

The morning brings Prince Oberyn, who fawns over Rhaenys as if he has never seen a babe before. That was untrue, at least. His bastard daughters, Obara and Nymeria, remained at the Water Gardens, but Rhaegar had never begrudged him his children. Eventually, once they were old enough, and when she was Queen, they might come to King’s Landing as Rhaenys’s ladies, though she had not voiced that proposal to Oberyn just yet. The difference in status between all the children might be a cause of tension, and Rhaegar needed the older girls to understand their place before they could be introduced to Court.

From what Lady Mellario had told her, Oberyn was not present at the birth of either of his daughters, nor did he claim them for the first few years of their lives. It had been strange to her at first, but when she raised the matter during the negotiations, Prince Doran had assured her that her wishes, whatever they might be, would be respected. 

She had locked eyes with Oberyn then and said that she did not mind children from before the marriage, but would not tolerate any after. He had accepted that easily enough, and the conversation had rapidly moved on.

“What would you have named her?” Rhaegar asks, impulsively. Oberyn looks at her then, from where he sits rocking Rhaenys.

He simply shrugs. “I am of the belief that mothers should name their children. You chose well, considering. She needed a Targaryen name.”

“She did,” she agrees, “but it would have been better had I asked your opinion on the matter.”

His lips move a bit before clamping again, and he returns his attention to the little child murmuring nonsense in his lap.

When the wetnurse comes to feed and change Rhaenys, Rhaegar and Oberyn find themselves alone together for the first time as parents to a daughter, a Princess of both Dorne and the Iron Throne. The room between them has shifted, that much is clear, and she is at a loss for words. 

“Princess,” Oberyn starts, leaning forward onto his knees. He doesn’t speak again for some time, and she does not attempt to open her own mouth. Only when Rhaenys is returned to her does she suggest they go for a walk in the garden.

“Yes, of course,” he agrees readily, visibly relieved at the suggestion. 

Aegon’s Garden would hardly be called a garden to most - the land is not ripe for pleasant plants such as strawberries and daisies. The plants are of the more interesting variety, trees with blue leaves that produce poisonous fruit, the thick smell of cranberries and pine engulfing anyone who enters. Rhaenys, secured in Rhaegar’s arms, does not seem to mind though, her eyes darting around, uncomprehending yet inquisitive. 

Rhaegar always thought Oberyn would enjoy this place. They have never traversed it together, until now. His confident steps tell her that she was correct, that he has likely spent much time here without her. She wishes it was different, but there is no going back.

Finally, he says what he wishes to say. “We will return to present Rhaenys to Court soon, will we not?” She nods, gesturing for him to go on. 

“And from then we will remain there for some time, will we not?” She nods again, hackles beginning to rise.

“I was relieved that Rhaenys looks so. To have a truly Targaryen daughter at Court - it would have sat ill with me.” He looks at her pointedly, which she meets with a hard stare. It does not cow him, however. “Indeed, to even have a truly Targaryen wife at Court sits ill with me.”

“I do not enjoy it either,” she replies simply, turning her face away. He has agitated her.

“Indeed, Princess. Many do not enjoy it. But few are in the position to do anything about it.”

She stops walking and whips around, looking each direction to ensure they are alone. Mercifully, they are. “We will not speak further on this matter,” she tells him, eyes ablaze. That is not to say it does not weigh on her. But she does not _trust_ him. He is hot-headed, impulsive, quick to anger. He barely listens to her as it is. She cannot rely on him to stick to a plan.

It is better to keep him at an arm’s length, she decided long ago.

He, evidently, disagrees. Something flashes across his gaze, and the next words he speaks are ones she did not expect.

“It is an amusing thought, Princess. I do not know how long I will last at Court with your father as King. But, then, I do not know how long I will last at Court with you as Queen, either.” _How dare you,_ she wants to say, but the fight has fled from her. 

“You are the father of my daughter,” she tells him, slowly, defeat dripping from every word, “I have given you more than I have ever given another, even though you do not keep your vows to me. It has never been enough for you, Prince Oberyn. I had hoped that with Rhaenys, we might come to an understanding, and let some of the past go.”

He hesitates then, some shame in his eyes. “As you say, Princess,” he finally says, letting his shoulders drop. “We have Rhaenys now. She is a gift like no other, and I have been remiss in showing you my gratitude. But we must think of her future. She deserves safety,” he pauses, weighing his words, “and she deserves better than you have received, wife.”

Those words were halfway kind, she thinks, bemused. “She will have it,” Rhaegar promises. Oberyn’s eyes are steel, but she knows that they will always come together for the sake of this child. “She will have it, no matter what I must do to ensure such a thing.”

Oberyn inclines his head, and holds out his arms that he might carry Rhaenys around for a bit. Rhaegar’s arms thank him, falling to her side limply, and silence reigns throughout the rest of their walk.

Upon their return to the castle, however, a thought strikes her.

“Prince Oberyn,” she calls, and he turns with an eyebrow arched, “how was it that you came to the birthing chamber? Fathers are usually not called until the babe comes.”

His lips curl queerly, as if it is her question that is strange. “I did not need to be _called_ , Princess. I was there from when your labors began. I only came to your bedside when I heard the midwife and maester say that they had...concerns.”

He takes a step towards her, the amusement in his mouth turning to stone, “why, would another have been more welcome?” It is Arthur he refers to, of course. He is constantly making his insinuations, and although she cannot blame him given their history, she does not enjoy the aspersions on her character. As always, she is being punished for doing nothing wrong. This time, though, she brushes it off, Rhaenys sleeping in her arms keeping her bite at bay.

“No,” she states simply, “I was merely curious. Your presence...it was a great comfort, husband. My strength failed me, at the end.”

He seems surprised at her thanks. He inclines his head, their eyes lingering on each other for a moment that stretches on beyond itself, before he turns to take his leave. 

The castle groans beneath its own weight, and Rhaegar hugs her little princess close.


	2. King's Landing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A return to the capital city, and what was better left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (just a heads up that while there will be no incest, aerys is still a creep fixated on his daughter)

The smell of King’s Landing brings all of them from their compartments on their vessel, lest they lose their meals from the combination of the ship rocking and the omnipresent rotting garbage.

When Rhaegar had served as Regent, she had begun construction of a centralized sewer system that would allow for some cleanliness in the streets, for the sake of the peasant’s health. It had been a passion project, having spent much time in disguise and traversing Flea Bottom with Arthur and Jon. Barristan was the only Kingsguard willing to indulge their whims for adventure, although Arthur had several times invited Prince Lewyn, who always declined. Any spare moment available he spent in the arms of his lover, and so the taverns of the smallfolk did not appeal to him.

She wrinkles her nose. Aerys had put a stop to the construction when Tywin had complimented her work in a Small Council meeting following his return. She preferred to think of it as simply delayed, as it would remain until her own reign began. She thought of most things that way.

“Do you fare well, wife?” the voice of her husband comes from behind her, as she looks over the deck into the filthy water beneath them.

“Yes,” she answers, turning to see a displeased expression on his otherwise quite interesting face. She has always found him interesting to look upon, to tell the truth. “We will arrive soon, my Prince. From there it will not be a long ride to the Red Keep.”

“As you say,” he responds, “and where is Rhaenys?”

The name of her daughter brings a smile to Rhaegar’s face. “With the wetnurse below. She does not need to be subjected to the stench of the capital just yet, I believe.”

“Yes, we might spare her for some time,” Oberyn agrees, and Rhaegar chuckles. The brief moment of camaraderie dies when she returns her sight to the rapidly approaching land, and sees a spire of her father’s castle appear on the horizon. Her headache has already started, and a vice grips her heart within her. She does not look forward to this reunion, for many personal reasons, as well as others beyond.

Not the least of which was that Prince Oberyn and King Aerys were a combination as unholy as all Seven Hells. Several times before, she had cause to fear that her husband might lose his head at the hands of her sire. She anticipated experiencing such a feeling several times more, likely beginning the moment they stepped foot into the grand courtyard.

Dorne had never kneeled to the Iron Throne. The problem was, neither did Prince Oberyn. 

“Have you thought more on our conversation?” he asks, pitching his voice deep and low. His mouth was a mere breath away from her ear, and his hands settled on her bare arms, just above her elbows, after the boat gave way to a particularly strong wave. Having him so close was nice, as it had been since the debacle of birth. They had spent more time in each other’s company in the past two moons than all nine of her pregnancy, and so his touch was no longer foreign. He had even taken her twice, quick and passionate affairs that served more to relieve tension than anything else, although they still kept to separate beds. She would never turn him away, even if their couplings had not been as enjoyable as they blessedly were. There was the Prince that was Promised to think of. Not to mention, her husband’s reputation as a skilled lover was much deserved, helping her to feel at home in her body once again.

One negative of their relative peace, though, was that he frequently revisited their conversation in the garden. She had yet to surrender, but he never let up. That worked against him, unfortunately.

“It is not a conversation when you are speaking and I am resolutely ignoring you,” she grumbles, and Oberyn’s grip loosens slightly. 

“Nonetheless,” he continues, “I believe my stance is clear. I await your agreement, which we both know will come sooner or later.”

“Later, then,” she says in a cavalier manner, and turns around to meet him head on, to show that her words on this topic are final. When she spins, she finds that their faces are quite close, and Rhaegar foolishly thinks he will kiss her for a moment.

The moment passes by when Arthur comes up to the deck. Rhaegar would take a step back to create some distance, but she is at the very edge, and cannot. Oberyn does not either, in fact seems to crowd into her even further. She rolls her eyes at the display.

“It is dangerous to be so close to the edge, Princess,” Arthur addresses her directly, as if Oberyn Martell is a mere fly in the air. That sits ill with her husband, but she slips out of the cage of his body when he becomes distracted, and comes closer to the center of the ship.

“Yes, thank you, Ser,” she says, keeping her voice level, “do you have need of us?” She can feel Oberyn’s glare on Arthur’s face without turning at all. The proximity of King’s Landing hangs over all of them like the executioner’s sword, swirling up memories from the depths of the Blackwater Bay.

_She was clenching her teeth so hard her jaw felt as if it was rattling, but still the hot, shameful tears leaked out. She lets out a sob, and Arthur’s expression is pained, before he turns his face away entirely._

_If it were just them, he might reach out and comfort her. Even through his own degradation, he would do so._

_“Why do you weep, daughter?” Aerys asks, long nails trailing down her face. The sensation disgusted her. “Do not mar your beauty with tears. You are the dragon, and you may take what you please.”_

_Across from her, Oberyn’s tight fists shook with rage._

“Only to inform you that we will dock momentarily,” he says, kindness in his gaze. “Prince Lewyn and Lord Commander Gerold have come to escort us, I can see them on the shore.”

Prince Lewyn and Ser Gerold do indeed greet them, and Oberyn speaks to his uncle warmly. Rhaenys has been returned to Rhaegar’s arms, and she enters the wheelhouse brought for her, although she feels up to riding. It might have been pleasant to have her stallion back underneath her, but it would not be proper.

Fuck what is proper, she thinks sourly, sitting in the chamber with the nurse, who she quite liked, and the two of her ladies she had brought to Dragonstone, who she did not care much for. Long the only child, she had been trained to ride, hunt, hawk, and wield as if she was a son. Those had come easily to her, although she enjoyed none of them as much as she did her books, or her beloved harp. It was only later that her father decided she needed to be stuffed into revealing dresses and made into a proper Princess. The courtesies chafed at her.

By the time they arrive in the Keep, Rhaegar emerged from her ridiculous carriage to find the men of the escort irritable and withholding. That does not bode well. That was another reason she should have been on horseback - there is much she needs to be informed of.

_”Your Grace,” she pleaded, afraid of what Aerys might do to any of them if she lets this go on much longer. “Your Grace, I beg of you, do not shame me any longer.”_

_“Shame you?” he laughed in the manner that maniacs did. He laughed like the Smiling Knight. Like Simon Toyne. “I honor you, beautiful girl. The power lies in your hands. Let this Martell Princeling never forget his place.”_

_With a wave of one gnarled hand, however, Aerys dismissed the child, and Arthur’s shoulders sagged low from where he kneeled. He was sworn to defend children. But he had not had a choice._

“May we have leave to refresh ourselves before meeting with my royal sire?” she asks Lord Hand Tywin, who comes to meet her, couching herself in the language of Court.

He appraised her, eyes on the babe in her arms. It did not take a mindreader to see his mind beginning to do calculations now that he saw it was a girl she held. _He still hopes to foist young Jaime onto me_ , she notes with some humor. Until she had a dozen sons, Tywin Lannister would hope and dream, this she knows.

He is not the only man in the castle who covets her in such an indecent manner. Tywin is the less dangerous of them, which allows her to find mirth in his plots. In others, there was no such humor to be found.

_Prince Oberyn rose violently from his seat, sending his chair toppling to the floor. Arthur had stood as well, but he had not made as much noise, which might protect him from the gleeful wrath Aerys was clearly in the mood to impart._

_“You dare insult House Martell in this manner,” Oberyn seethed, the threat of retaliation from the Dornish going unsaid. Aerys cackled from where his hands lay on her shoulders, pressing into her skin. He sounded more mad than ever before._

_“Insult? The insult is that her cunt will be sullied by a Dornishman’s seed. If my useless wife had given her a brother sooner, she would spread her legs for a Targaryen, a King, as she was made to do. But all hope is not lost, is it, sweet daughter?”_

“I am afraid not,” Tywin tells her, and any sliver of hope that had lived in her chest crawls into a ball and rots. Aerys is not happy, then. When was he ever?

Rhaegar nods, and turns to instruct her ladies on the needs of their casings. They all travel light, so there is not much to say. She turns then to the sworn brothers of the Kingsguard, who converse with one another in hushed tones.

“Ser Arthur,” she calls, and they all turn. “You have traveled long with us. You are dismissed for the day. Prince Lewyn and Lord Commander Gerold will accompany me to His Grace’s solar.”

Arthur looks like he might argue, and he does. “Princess, it is no issue. I am perfectly capable of performing my duties.” Please do not send me away for this, he means. 

“Of course, Ser. But I would prefer you rest for now. You will resume your duties on the morrow.” She lets her eyes fall away from him then and onto Prince Oberyn, whose face is utterly blank.

“Yes, Your Grace,” Arthur agrees, although he is discomfited. It is for the best, though.

_”Yes, I kissed her. I touched her. But I never took her, not once. I would not dishonor the Princess,” Arthur grit his teeth, his brown complexion flushing a deep red._

_“He said he loved her,” the child spoke once again, eyes wide with fear. The young boy was shaking, but Varys kept a grip on his shoulder, never letting him fall._

_Arthur let out a huff of air. “That was before I swore myself to you, Your Grace. I have not broken my vows. My feelings were known to you even then.”_

_Aerys laughed from where he caressed her hair. A nail snagged on a tangle in her silver mane and he yanked until the tendril came free from her scalp._

_“I care nothing for some youthful dalliance that was not even consummated,” Oberyn said, breaking his silence. The tightness of his expression indicated that he cared very much, but even he recognized the urgency of this moment._

_Aerys would not be stopped, however._

_“And what of my daughter?” he directed his inquiry at the child. The little bird._

_“She...the Princess…” the child seemed confused as to what to do. Rhaegar had met this one before. She had even spoken to him, and sent a wooden sword to his master in the stable for the child, who had told her he desired one. When she saw him next, he had thanked her profusely, and she had ruffled his hair._

_She smiled as best she could at the boy. He must tell the truth. She would not have his blood on her hands, not for anything._

_“She kissed him. She said she loved him. She said she wished they could marry that day. She...she took his cock in her mouth and that made him happy, I think,” he confessed, and Rhaegar braved a look towards Oberyn. She dared not meet Aerys’s gaze._

_Her husband was losing control, that much was obvious._

_“I admit it,” she rushed, before her father could open his mouth. “There was an understanding, at the time, that Ser Arthur and I would be wed one day. I did not think we were doing anything wrong, albeit early. When that understanding ended, so did our indiscretions. We did not lie together, Prince Oberyn, and I remained a maiden on our wedding night. You know this.”_

_“I do,” he replied through clenched teeth, “for I saw your maiden’s blood.” He did not meet her pleading eyes, though. The fire and hate in him was directed solely towards Aerys._

The walk to the King’s solar was silent and tense. She held Rhaenys tightly, and the child made displeased noises, at which time Rhaegar eased her grip a bit.

Oberyn walked beside her with long strides. She wished to reach out to him, to ensure they would go in the room as a united pair, but there were too many eyes about. And he would not look at her, so no nonverbal agreement could be reached.

He was being fucking insufferable, she thought bitterly, perhaps unfairly. His position was not enviable either. But, then, they both knew what they were about to face. She did not think an inkling of reassurance was too much to ask for. 

_”You might have fucked him, daughter,” Aerys simpered in her ear, “your desire was plain to see. To watch you deny yourself was only disappointing.”_

_“Your Grace,” she protested uneasily, as his spindly hands went lower on her chest._

_“A Targaryen needs not deny themselves,” he crooned, when his hands came to cup her breasts, caressing them like a lover might. She curled in on herself. Aerys was her father. He had bounced her on his knee when she was a child, perhaps not often, but he had. This sickness, this perversion, of his had destroyed him completely._

_“My King,” Varys interrupted, as if only now realizing the gravity of the situation. If Aerys tried to take her, someone in the room would not survive the night. Certainly The Spider would not live to serve Aerys’s successor, if he did not put a stop to this._

_“Silence!” Aerys commanded. He yanked her hair so that her head fell to one side, and her neck was exposed to him. It was Prince Oberyn he looked upon._

_“Understand this, princeling,” he sneered, “there are many who would give an arm to fuck her. My beautiful daughter. She is a jewel like no other. She has no need of you, you will merely get children upon her for the glory of House Targaryen. And if you do not do your duty,” he paused then, and smiled a terrible smile. She felt it against her neck, rather than seeing it._

_“If you do not do your duty, then I might do it instead. A pure Targaryen child is worth more than any mutt that might come from you, anyway.”_

_After that, everything truly went to shit._

It is her mother they see first.

Beautiful, soft, traumatized Rhaella. “Daughter,” she croons, and Rhaegar wishes to collapse in her arms. She had not done so before, an exceedingly independent child, but now that she was a mother herself...she understood many things differently.

And behind Rhaella, was Aerys, of course. In his youth Rhaegar remembers he was a handsome enough man. Now, he seemed as cursed as Maelys.

“Your Graces,” she bows instead, and her husband does the same, “I present to you my firstborn daughter, Rhaenys Nymeros Targaryen. She is healthy and hearty. I pray that she pleases you as deeply as she has pleased my husband and I.”

She extends her arms, and the babe makes an adorable gurgling noise. Rhaella smiled immediately, and approached the little bundle.

“How sweet she looks,” Rhaella fawned over Rhaenys, bringing her into her own arms. Rhaegar backed into Oberyn, who placed a hand on the small of her back. That was the reassurance she had wanted. She could barely feel it now, as Rhaella moved to share the precious girl in her arms with her brother-husband.

Aerys took one look at the babe, and wrinkled his nose as if offended. “Smells Dornish,” he said dismissively, and returned to his desk, fumbling around his papers.

She tensed. Oberyn did too. The King did not look up again, though. “We will have a welcome feast tomorrow evening. You are dismissed. Sister, you will stay.”

Rhaenys was returned to Oberyn’s arms with one last kiss from Rhaella, and they left the room.

“That went well,” she remarked, perhaps carelessly, once they were farther away. Evidently, the Dornish prince did not agree.

“Smells Dornish?” he seethed, and Rhaegar sighed inside of herself.

“It could have been worse, I only meant,” she clarified, and he shook his head as if she could not possibly understand. 

“I will see you at the feast,” he mumbled, once Rhaenys was safely in the nursery, being attended to by the Septa brought in specifically for her. Rhaegar remained, and sang to her daughter until her almond eyes closed in slumber.  
.  
.  
.

The feast was well put together, as all events organized by Rhaella were. She was a dutiful Queen, and Rhaegar made sure to compliment her mother. Oberyn drummed his fingers on the table, clearly unamused by the festivities.

“Do your other bastards have your look as well, my Prince,” Aerys asked mockingly, carding through his unruly beard with his overgrown fingernails.

“All of my daughters share my features,” Oberyn replied flatly, keeping his eyes on the feast in front of them.

Aerys narrowed his eyes. “You will say Your Grace when you address me, Viper.” The use of the nickname was an additional insult.

“My apologies, Your Grace,” her husband did not take the bait, for which she was pleased. Aerys, of course, was not.

“It is good that you know how to do your duty, but we await a son eagerly. If you are capable of having them, of course.”

“Your Grace,” Rhaegar interrupts, “we have much time to bring about a son. I am quite healthy, the birth passing easily enough, and we all pray that you will live a long life.”

Aerys looks at her, truly looks at her, for the first time since she arrived. She regrets speaking up and drawing attention to herself as his mouth turns into a lascivious grin. “Indeed, beautiful girl. Keep spreading your pretty legs and do what your mother could not. You were built for birthing, it seems! To look upon your large teats is the sweetest pleasure. Ser Arthur agrees, I am sure.”

Oberyn’s face swivels so quickly she fears his neck might crack. He could never resist this goading, Rhaegar despairs. 

However, Aerys is not finished at all. “Tell me, Rhaegar, do you feed the girl yourself?”

Rhaegar did not want to, but she had no choice other than to answer honestly. “At times,” she responds reluctantly. Aerys positively _howls_.

“A breastfeeding woman is one of life’s joys,” he crows to Oberyn, challenge in his gaze. “That is, if you are man enough to appreciate such a thing. Your wife’s lover is Dornish as well, is he not? Perhaps little Rhaenys is not a Martell at all. Tell me, Prince Oberyn, have you fucked her since the babe? Have you drank from her?”

Rhaella sips her wine as if nothing is happening at all. Rhaegar hates her in that moment, and is promptly taken aback by the strength of how she despises her own mother. She dismisses the feeling immediately - this is the Queen’s nature. Rhaella is a defeated woman, an obedient woman. She may love Rhaegar, but she will not anger her royal husband by defending her. The reminder of how alone she truly is brings a melancholy to Rhaegar, one she is unfortunately well accustomed to.

Oberyn is fuming, and Rhaegar interrupts before this powder keg explodes.

“My King, I am suddenly taken ill. The remnants of the birth are still about me, I fear. Might we be excused? My husband often reads to me at such a time, to assist me with my rest.”

Aerys waves his hand, frowning at an end being put to his fun. Rhaegar allows her husband to help her up, feigning back aches, and they begin their descent. Aerys has one last affront to impart, however.

“Yes, see her to her chambers, Prince Oberyn. Ser Arthur guards her this night, so she will certainly be safe. Perhaps he might lessen the burden she carries, if you are not up to the task. He is ever dutiful.” Aerys gestures to Rhaegar’s breasts, which are indeed large and heavy with the milk that she has not lost yet. His cruel laughter follows them, and tears sting at Rhaegar’s eyes. 

_Arthur kneels at Aerys’s orders, confusion evident on his features. He looks to Rhaegar, who is full of fear. He touched the hilt of the sword on his back, to reassure her that he was prepared for anything, but it was not physical humiliation that Aerys sought to impart._

_He did not see that. Neither of them had._

_“Enter, Spider,” Aerys calls, and the eunuch had, false modesty in full force. Beside him stood a doe-eyed child, no more than ten._

“Is Her Grace ill, my Prince?” Arthur asks, when the two of them arrive at her chambers. Oberyn has a vice grip on her arm, and he almost throws her through the door that Arthur has opened. He does not respond to the knight’s question, but Arthur looks in protectively. If she is in danger, he will not leave her, that much is a relief to her.

“Yes,” Oberyn snarls, turning on Arthur with vicious eyes. Why he is called the Red Viper is painfully clear to Rhaegar in that moment. “Yes, she is ill. Everyone in this fucking place is sick, Dayne. Aerys is the sickest of them all, but none are free from this...this _disease_ of the Targaryens. You are just as fucking repulsive as the rest of them, I am beginning to think.” He slams the door in Arthur’s face, which is creased in visible frustration.

“Prince Oberyn,” Rhaegar makes to soothe him, but he levels the same disgust at her.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut, Princess,” he bellows, uncaring of any who might hear. “Do not try to make me calm, you witch, for I have suffered more than enough slander on your behalf!”

This is not a situation she can contain. Fine, she thinks, allowing the resentment to boil and rise up in her. That gives her permission to give him back what he deserves as well.

_She waits in his chambers, and the candle is almost burnt to the bottom when he stumbles in. He reeks of drink, of some Dornish sour. She stands to meet him, and his smile upon seeing her is cruel._

_“Yes, wife? Have I been remiss in doing my husbandly duties so long that you now seek me out? I am surprised you did not simply settle for a replacement closer to your heart.”_

_“I am not here to fight,” she murmured, a woman’s conciliatory tone, “I wished to apologize for what occurred two nights before.”_

_He laughed darkly, and she suddenly saw the scratches at his neck. He notices her line of sight and his lips thin, eyes hardening, as he rips the tunic from his torso, so that she can look upon the bite marks, love marks, and scratches all over him._

_“Sweet of you to say,” his words are ugly, “but there is no need. Three good whores have fucked the offense away, Princess.”_

“You have suffered?” she laughs incredulously, “what have you _suffered_ , Prince? I have carried the babe of a man too immature to keep to one bed, too ill-mannered to speak to the mother of his child with any respect! You have been insulted? My father threatens to rape me, each time more honest than the last! He already does rape my own mother, and you speak of slander?”

He is not cowed, never cowed. “Yes, Princess, your father, our King, does all of that, and you lift not a finger to stop him. Is your life of luxury so precious to you? Would you make yourself a whore if it means you may keep your gowns, and your jewels, and your station?”

_”I made my stance on you seeing whores clear during our marriage talks,” Rhaegar reminded him furiously._

_“You made your stance on bastards clear, dear wife. I will have no bastards of these nights, I assure you, for all the whores I took were men. Now that I see the truth of you, however, I must ask that you not have bastards either, Princess” he taunted her._

“How dare you,” she finally sets free the words she has always held back, “how dare you, you whoring, lecherous man? You are in no place to judge me, you never have been! I must create and keep peace for the entire realm, with my House at its weakest since the Dance of Dragons, and you think of nothing but your own pleasures! You are a man without honor!” 

“I think of my daughter!” he roars, burning as bright as the desert sun, “I think of Rhaenys, who will be raised in the home of your mad father, and by a mother who sits idly by as her own humiliation passes her by! But yes, by all means Princess, remind me of my place, that all I am is a cock between your legs. You Targaryens may think to make a bed slave of a Martell, but there is a limit to what we will tolerate from you and yours, Princess Rhaegar.”

“A bed slave?” she gasps, affronted, “I have never made you into any such thing. I have never sought you for the act of lovemaking, I have only ever accepted when you came to me, but now you cast yourself the unwitting whore? You are as mad as he is!”

He laughs then, not a trace of humor to be found in it. The ‘he’ in question needed no naming.

An orb of dragonglass sat on her table, a centerpiece she had discovered in the ruins of Summerhall during one of her trips there in her youth. Thin tendrils ran all throughout it, remnants of the tragedy that had struck, and of the delicacy of the object. When she first found it, Rhaegar had polished it til it shone, and the weight of it in her hands always brought her peace. 

He picks up the heirloom, hurling it against a wall, where it shatters into a thousand pieces sent skittering all across the floor. Rhaegar cries out, lifting her skirts and sweeping the shards aside before they cut her.

_The slap across his face rang loud, reverberating around the dim room. She fled, distress pulling her towards her own solar, where Arthur stood guard. This was the first they had seen of each other since that terrible evening, and she rushed past him when he looked upon her in surprise and worry._

“At least I am honest about my indulgences,” he speaks threateningly, “everyone believes you the perfect princess, but we both know that’s not true. Rhaenys may look like me, but the Dornish look is so common, is it not?”

“Fuck you,” Rhaegar spits out, the vulgarity unfamiliar to her lips, yet fitting. She shoves him, the force rising from the deepest parts of her. She goes to shove him again, but he grabs both of her wrists in one hand, holding them tightly. Oberyn raises his hand as if to hit her, unthinking in his anger, and Rhaegar closes her eyes and flinches to the side to avoid it.

If he hits her, so be it. She will give the slight back to him when she has the opportunity.

She waits. But the blow never comes. 

“I will remove the hand you use to strike her, Prince Oberyn,” the steel of Arthur’s deep voice interrupts the raging volcano that is erupting between husband and wife. Oberyn drops her wrists, and Rhaegar opens her eyes.

The room is dark, but the shimmering white blade called Dawn is unmistakable, even though Rhaegar can count on two hands the number of times she has even seen Dawn. It lies at the soft neck of Prince Oberyn, fearsome and righteous. This is not the first time he drew it for her, he had when Simon Toyne sought her life in Storm’s End, but it is by far the most jarring.

_”I never unsheath her unless I am willing to kill with her,” he had told her, when she asked him why he did not train with Dawn. “Some weapons demand blood.”_

“You would raise Dawn against a Martell of Sunspear,” Oberyn whispers, all prior rage dissipated. For Dawn is a sword of Dorne, and since Nymeria arrived on the shores of Westeros, Dorne has not risen against their ruling House. There is outrage in Oberyn’s tone, but it takes a second seat to the shock.

Arthur inclines his head. “I am sworn to protect her. Even from a Prince of Dorne. Now step away.”

Oberyn does so, backing away, and Arthur lowers his blade, although he does not sheath her. Merely holds her at his side. He moves so that Rhaegar is positioned behind him, which she allows him to do, unthinkingly.

“You are a great knight,” Oberyn says, distaste in his tone, “a protector of women. Of the woman you love, especially.”

So now the accusation is out in the open, at least, Rhaegar thinks, coming back to herself. Even if it is not true.

_”He loves her still, and he will never leave her side,” Aerys boasted. “Remember that, princeling.”_

“You do not need to love a woman to not raise a hand to her,” Arthur says, one hand going behind him to find purchase on Rhaegar’s waist. The touch rankles her. She is not a coward, and she can fight her own battles. 

That stops Oberyn in his steps. “You are correct, Ser,” he apologizes softly, begrudgingly, “that was regrettable on my part.”

“Indeed it was,” Rhaegar is the one who responds, stepping out from behind chivalrous Arthur, “and you will not do it again. But this place has been difficult for both of us. We will stay for a few days, for I have people I must entreat with, but after that...after that we might go away for a time. We will speak more then, when there are not a hundred eyes and ears around every corner.”

Oberyn’s face is indecipherable. After looking at her for a long while, he nods once, concedes, “as you say, Princess,” and leaves, crushing broken glass underfoot.

“Rhaegar-” Arthur puts a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs it off. 

“We will ride for Summerhall in a fortnight. You, me, Oberyn, Oswell, and the nurse. You know what preparations need to be made.” She steps over the rubble of the dragon glass, unlatching the doors to her balcony and stepping out into the night air. She leaves her scuffed boots at the doorway, the texture of the marble calming beneath her bare feet.

“Rhaegar,” he says again, tenderness and worry married in his voice. She bristles at the sound of it.

_”Forgive me, Rhaegar,” Arthur entreated, when she could finally stand to leave her rooms again. They stood in a window overlooking her mother’s garden._

_“There is naught to forgive,” she had replied, heaviness in her every word, every movement, “but it is clear to me now that we cannot tarry any longer. Bring Oswell and Lord Lonmouth to the training yard on the morrow, if you will. We have much to discuss.”_

_“Is that all?” he asked._

_She leaned her head against the pillar. The coolness was pleasant, and she closed her eyes to savor the sensation. “All that you can do. For I alone can be sweet to my husband. The realm requires an heir.”_

“That is all, Arthur. You are dismissed.” She lies on the seat meant for her to take her private tea on, turning her eyes to the stars. She traces the constellations that she knows, naming them, a hobby of her childhood. She can hear Arthur breathing nearby, as he lingers to see if she wishes to speak.

When he accepts that she will not, he bids her a good night, and departs. Rhaegar falls asleep beneath the stars, and dreams that the entire world is set ablaze.  
.  
.  
.

In the morning, she requests leave for Summerhall. She uses the excuse that the maester believes the pollution of the city is not conducive to her recovery, in preparation for a second pregnancy. Aerys grants it, kissing her cheek in a way that makes her sick.

She pens a letter to Lord Whent, reviewing the specifics with Oswell. She meets with many a Lord, riding with them, hawking with them, and more. She has never begged for money before, she thinks, amused, but she is not half bad at it. The purse for the tourney will be legendary.

She even meets with Tywin to discuss matters of State. From him, she makes a mental list of Houses she believes will be sympathetic to her cause, and those she should not bother with. 

“Jaime is eager to return to Ser Arthur’s side,” Tywin tells her gruffly. “The progress of the Westerlands is near complete.”

“Indeed, his presence has been missed at Court,” she flatters the old man.

All the while, Prince Oberyn is nowhere to be found. On the third day, Rhaegar begins to ask about him. 

“Him and a party of his left at first light, the morning after the feast,” the stablehand told her, nervously.

“He took the Kingsroad down towards the Kingswood. Perhaps for some hunting,” the Captain of the City Guard said, shrugging and leering at her figure.

“They did not take many weapons, most of them their own,” the Master-at-Arms offered up when questioned.

It was Prince Lewyn who finally admitted what she had suspected all along. “He rides for Sunspear, Your Grace. I tried to convince him against it, but he was determined. Please understand, his blood runs hot. He will return soon enough. Prince Doran will ensure it.”

“I am sure he will,” Rhaegar said, with no true surprise, “but I will not wait for him. I leave for Summerhall a few days hence. If he has come to his senses by then, he might join me.”

Lewyn’s sympathetic look told her that he doubted such a thing would occur. So did she.

That was fine, she thought, as she had a sling fitted for Rhaenys to ride on her chest. This was delicate work. He would only get in her way. The words fell flat even to her own self.

_”You are not easy to find,” she tried to start this conversation off on a good note. Luckily, her husband was amenable._

_“Nothing worth finding is,” he replied with a wry smile, turning his attention away from his spear. Apologies did not pass from either of their lips, but they were present all the same._

_“I have news for you, husband.” His eyes crinkled, curiosity plain. She went on, eager to share, “I am with child. The maester says I am perhaps two moons along.”_

_“Indeed?” he asked wondrously, and took a step to her, “that is joyous news, indeed.”_

_He dropped his spear on the ground, and closed the distance between them. The bright afternoon sun illuminated the specks of green in his eyes of burnt umber. He placed a hand on her stomach, which she encouraged with a nod, and felt the barely present hardness of her womb._

_Across the training yard, Arthur’s eyes fell on them. His focus trailed downwards to the distinct placement of Oberyn’s hand, and his lips pressed together as if in pain. He looked away quickly, and Rhaegar smiled widely at Oberyn once more._  
.  
.  
.

They are no more than a day’s ride from King’s Landing when Ser Oswell takes his leave of them.

“I will see this task done, Princess, if it kills me,” he swore.

“It will not come to that, Ser,” she assures him, “and please pass my love to your brother and his wife. They have been most gracious. This horror will end one day, but my gratitude towards your family will not.”

She kisses him on both cheeks, and he bows to her deeply, before turning towards the direction of the God’s Eye. She watches him until he is gone from her sight, and then returns to Arthur and Mallora, her nurse. Rhaenys has taken to the rhythm of riding, which Rhaegar is much grateful for, and she refastens her sling along with the brunette wig she dons. Arthur similarly wears a cap that conceals his eyes for the most part, and armor that is polished black. 

She does not speak to him often on the ride downwards. For some reason, she cannot stand the sight of him lately. Oberyn is not here for her to despise the look of, but she is sure that if he was, she would feel similarly towards him.

Fucking _men_ , she thinks, for Mallora does not irritate her even a little. In fact, Rhaegar greatly enjoys speaking to her, and the two form a strong camaraderie as they approach Summerhall.

“I take no gods,” Mallora proudly proclaimed, in her steep Braavosi accent, “there is but what we make for ourselves.”

“Indeed,” Rhaegar parried, “but surely there is more to this world than merely man? What of the Doom of Valyria? What of the stone dragons raised on Dragonstone? Even if there are no gods, there is still magic.”

“Perhaps,” the woman admits, “but perhaps not. If we have no way of knowing, why bother wondering, I say? Worry about the life you’re living. Seize it.”

Rhaegar mulled over that, riding in silence while Rhaenys slept easy against her body. Arthur remained quiet, a shadow, searching for danger. She was glad of it.

When Summerhall appeared in their view, it was only early afternoon. On a visit long prior, when Rhaegar was five and ten, she, Ser Barristan, Ser Jonothor, and Ser Gerold had constructed a small, four room cottage out of the ruined stones for them to sleep in. It was there that Rhaegar and Mallora set to cleaning, readying it for the night, while Arthur took to the nearby river to catch fish for their dinner. She started a fire, and Arthur brought impressively sized trout to them, which they roasted alongside some herbs and potatoes growing nearby. They even fashioned a crib-like structure for Rhaenys out of worn lumber set aside on a past expedition.

By all means, it was a decent evening. But there was something festering under her skin, and she could not become comfortable no matter how she arranged herself. When Rhaegar lost the appetite for conversation, Mallora regaled them with stories of growing up on her father's fishing vessel, to little reaction.

The urge to snap at someone, to fight something, only expanded within her. She bid everyone good night, tossing and turning to the sounds of Rhaenys’s soft breathing. When her mind finally allowed slumber to claim her, she dreamed of her last trip to Summerhall, on her way to Sunspear.

_”Please, Rhaegar,” Arthur begged, on his knees, “you know...you must know, that I never wished to cause you pain.”_

_“I do not know that,” she said sorrowfully, bending so that their eyes were level. “I do not know anything about you any longer, Arthur Dayne. All I know is that I am in misery, and I wish for it to end. I cannot go on hating you any longer.”_

_“Whatever you ask of me, I will do,” he swore, and she could see in his eyes that he meant it. They were so expressive, and her heart stuttered._

_“Do not go behind my back again,” she said fiercely, and he promised it._

_“Do not speak false words of love or loyalty to me,” she said, and he promised it with heartbreak written all over his face. But he did not have the right to look so, she thought, and hardened her heart as much as she was able._

_She hesitated for her final condition. But if she did not give it, she would never rest. “Do not make me see you with another woman,” she said with a sob, and he promised it violently._

_“I will never take another,” he swore, resolve strong in his voice, and only then did she allow him back into her life. She could not resist touching him once more, the face that had always been her favorite, and he leaned into her touch like a man starved._

_So why, then? If he still loved her, then why? But she could not ask, because they had only just reached a truce._

She woke in the middle of the night, and fed Rhaenys herself, pacing her room in agitation. By the time she fell back asleep, she was near boiling, as if a fever had overtaken her. 

Rhaegar was on the precipice of something. With the slightest push, she was sure, she would fall over the edge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: summerhall :)


	3. Summerhall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Truths great and small are revealed, and what once lay dormant comes roaring back to life.

A restless night led to a late morning. By the time Rhaegar awoke, the sun was halfway to its zenith, and she stretched out, irritated at her own sloth. 

“Fair morning, Princess,” Mallora greets when she descends to the common room, from where Rhaenys sucked on a dusky nipple. The sight softens Rhaegar’s heart, and puts a smile on her face. The ease with which the nurse goes bare chested around her excites her, a womanly camaraderie that Rhaegar had sorely lacked in her lifetime.

“Fair morning, or what is left of it,” Rhaegar grumbles, drinking from the pail that Arthur had likely brought in the morning. 

“Strapping Arthur went to gather some wood for fire,” Mallora informs her with a twinkle in her pretty brown eyes, a teasing which Rhaegar did not understand. She comes to kiss Rhaenys on the brow, and when Mallora kisses the side of her mouth as well, they both laugh.

“What was that for?” Rhaegar asks, surprised, and Mallora grins knowingly.

“You seemed in need of a kiss, Princess,” she teases, and Rhaegar’s mood goes sour.

“Well, my husband does not care much for my kisses,” she answers honestly, gathering a towel, soap, and a scrub for bathing in the cool river nearby. Thoughts of Oberyn were unwelcome, her handsome cheater of a husband. Perhaps after this was all over, her and the Prince Oberyn might come to an understanding with each other, but for now, too much has passed. They both needed time in order to forgive each other, or at least she hoped that was the case, and so she would not give the topic any of her energy until that was accomplished.

“Well, I know someone else who might,” Mallora sings, her throaty voice thick with amusement. Rhaegar chuckles despite herself.

“And who might that be,” she goads the woman on, wondering if it was herself that Mallora flirted with. Rhaegar was not necessarily averse to it. As a Princess, it was improper, but she had always enjoyed flirting. And women were usually better at it than men.

“Gallant Ser Arthur, of course,” Mallora answers, as if it was uncomplicated, as if _that_ matter was not situated as precariously as a tower upon a cliff upon a tall mountain, with a storm brewing overhead.

 _I am the Crown Princess, planning to overthrow my insane father. I might lose my head any day now. If I cannot handle simple teasing from a peasant woman with her tits out, how am I meant to handle the Iron Throne_ , Rhaegar chastises herself.

“Ser Arthur is a knight of the Kingsguard, and has sworn away from women,” she replies simply.

“Many have sworn many a thing in their lives, but they rarely mean it,” Mallora shrugs, tying the laces of her dress back up

“Yes, well, Arthur takes his vows quite seriously, I assure you,” Rhaegar responds, perhaps more than a little bitterly.

“Aye, and I’m the Maiden,” Mallora mumbles, which Rhaegar takes as an affront.

“You doubt his honor,” she accuses, hackles raised on his behalf. Mallora only seems amused.

“I doubt very much that he would refuse you, when that man is clearly in love with you, Your Grace. I may not know much about Westeros, but I know that when a man looks at a woman like he is dying of thirst and she is the only thing that could quench him...well, that means what it means.” Mallora speaks so casually. Rhaegar feels like a million little needles are touching her skin.

“When does he look at me like that?” she asks, face hard.

Mallora seems amused that Rhaegar would even need to ask such a thing. Rarely does anyone look at Rhaegar thus. “When you are not watching, of course.”

That is enough of that. Rhaegar flees, making her way to the river, and bathing so vigorously that her skin goes raw and red. When her hand brushes between her legs, she shivers, and tears her hand away. That serves to frustrate her even more, and by the time she is dressed in her simple peasant’s dress, dyed dark red from berry stain, she feels half mad in her skin.

She attempts to ground herself, but unfortunately, it does not appear to be working.

She knows that Arthur is not a monster, that he feels great guilt over how the love between them ended. She knows he wears his emotions plain as day on his face. She also knows that she was prepared to give him everything, to raise him to royal consort and place his children on the throne, to allow him into her bed and her heart. And he threw it all in her face in exchange for a white cloak and his name going down in history. _The Sword of Morning, and the greatest knight who ever lived,_ a peasant child had screeched once, playing at swords while she rode through the town. And he was that. But only because he was not hers.

They will remain the great castle’s ruins for some time, to give Oswell’s journey cover. She cannot possibly hold this all in for that long, so she returns to the main structure seeking Arthur out. The burning beneath her skin has not lessened; the blood of the dragon is a powerful thing.

The sun is at its oeak when she finds him, working to construct a true cradle from the excess firewood he gathered. She imagines he has become quite hot underneath the unforgiving rays, which would explain why his tunic is set to the side, revealing the expanse of scarred tan skin stretched across his muscled form. It has been ages since she has seen him in any state of undress.

“Arthur,” she calls, and he turns, running a hand through his hair.

“Princess,” he greets her, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm, “is there anything you need?” She does not bother to answer, simply stalks up to him until there is not space for even air between them. He makes to take a step back, bewilderment in his eyes, but she puts her hands on his shoulders, which are warm to the touch, and pulls him closer. Her breasts are pressed against his chest, and his eyebrows are practically at his hairline at her inexplicable proximity when she lays a finger on the thin necklace that dips below his collarbones.

“You still wear this,” she states, tracing the small star pendant. It had been a gift from her, a bauble that reminded her of him. She hasn’t seen it for years, but all this time he kept it close to his heart.

“I-,” he responds, confused, “yes, I do, Princess. I won’t if it displeases you. I’ve worn it for so long, is all, and I am accustomed to it.”

“Yes, you must be,” she replies, absentmindedly, and then she kisses him. She places her hands on either side of his face and kisses him passionately, a fervor he returns for just a moment.

Then, of course, he pushes her away, stumbling back as if in a daze. “Why did you do that?” he demands, expression pained. It’s too late for all that, she thinks predatorily, all that pestering beneath her skin finally reaching the surface. These games he plays with her, they’re finished now.

“Because you are a liar,” she sneers, softness gone. Here is that Targaryen rage the stories sing of, brewed to a boil.

“I am a liar?” he repeats, indignant, “I have never lied to you.”

“Keeping the truth from me is the same as lying, Arthur” she volleys back, taking sick satisfaction at how the way she says his name causes him to flinch. He does not back down, though.

“If I have ever kept something from you, Rhaegar,” he insists, “it was only for your own good.” He seems to realize that was the wrong thing to say, but there is no taking it back.

“For my own good,” she mocks, scoffing, “for the good of House Dayne, you mean? For the good of your own reputation, as the deadliest Sword of Morning to ever wield Dawn? Is that what you mean?”

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about?” he asks, finally rising to meet her rage. He doesn’t swear often, and the word fuck said in the elongated Dornish manner sends a pulse between her legs. 

“Indeed!” she exclaims, ready to get into the heart of things now, “what could I possibly be talking about? Maybe, now that damn near three years have passed, I want to know _why_ you swore that oath, and why you did not have the decency to tell me before?” Her voice starts to crack, but she brushes any embarrassment off her shoulders. “I want to know when everything changed for you, because the Gods know nothing ever changed for me!”

“I kneeled here, in this very grass, and begged for your forgiveness,” he says darkly, dangerously, “and you gave it to me provided I met your conditions. Well I’ve met them, Rhaegar. Even when it killed me, I met them! I never went behind your back. I never spoke another word of love, of devotion, to you, no matter how deeply I wished to. And I sure as all Seven Hells never _fucked_ another woman. So it seems like I’m not the only liar here, Princess. Because you never forgave me at all!”

She half choked on a breath and balled up her fists, as hysterical as Daena the Defiant. “I took you in the only way I could have you!” she yells, voice rising with every word. “I took you in the only way that was left to me! I had no choice, Arthur!”

“You are not the only one who did not have a choice,” Arthur positively roars, and he would have gone on if Mallora had not made her appearance just then.

“Princess,” she began, likely to call them for the midday meal, but Arthur would have none of it.

“Get back inside, Mallora,” he commands without even looking at the woman, authority dripping from his tone. The nurse does as she is bid, and Rhaegar shivers at the power Arthur held but rarely unleashed. It made her wet, as he always had.

He looks at her then, face flushed with something long held back, and Rhaegar’s heart stutters in her chest. 

“You are not the only one who did not have a choice,” he echoes himself, less raging and more regretful. “I took the oath for you, Princess. Everything I’ve done has been for you.” The fight seems to go out of him then, and he stumbles backwards to the circle of stones surrounding the firepit, taking his seat with his head in his hands.

Rhaegar has sympathy for him, but she also wishes to hear the truth now. She takes to her knees in front of him, placing her elbows on his thighs, and brings his hands away from his face. Arthur looks lost, helplessly searching for the right thing to do or say, and she wraps her arms around his sturdy, bare torso. He returns her embrace, burying his face in her hair and breathing in deeply. The smell of her calmed him, he once said. Evidently, it still did. 

“Tell me,” she breaths, putting the barest of distance between them. They need it, if they are going to have an actual conversation, otherwise they might never get it all off their chests.

“I never wished for any of this mess,” he tells her so earnestly that it reminded her of the boy of six and ten who had uttered the words _I love you, Rhaegar_ for the first time. She nods, eyes resting on his comely facial hair, grown from days gone without shaving. 

“I know,” she assures him, and she does. In the heart of her, she always had.

“That day,” Arthur starts, and sucks in a breath. “That day, Aerys summoned me to his own chambers. It was strange, because he had never done so before, but I went with high hopes regardless. I thought perhaps...I thought it was the wedding he wished to discuss, and I was pleased that he was finally prepared to move forward. It had already been delayed for so long.”

That much was true. They were supposed to have their betrothal announced at the tourney celebrating Viserys’s birth, the wedding the following year, but Aerys had changed his mind at the last moment. Then, Duskendale had happened, and before they knew it two years had passed by without a concrete plan. Their trysts in the Godswood had not started until those delays began, uncertainty and impatience driving them to cross certain lines.

“He congratulated me on my victory against the Smiling Knight,” Arthur shudders at the memory, threads of disgust weaving into his words. “I went on that expedition to prove myself, to show him I was a worthy consort for you, a valuable goodson to him. I wish I never had.”

“It changed you,” Rhaegar recalls.

He had returned for the final time in the middle of the night. She was awake, anticipating his arrival, and snuck into his chambers through the maze of the Red Keep’s corridors. He had barely spoken, undressing them both forcefully, and she had been so slippery with her own arousal that he had merely turned her on her stomach, pressed her legs together, and slid himself between them to fuck her thighs, a mimicry of what they both truly wanted. Afterwards, she had cradled him to her chest while he lay awake for hours, in weighty silence.

“Yes,” Arthur admits, “but that is not the reason. Aerys—the things he said…,” he seemed hesitant to elaborate, so it must have been truly horrific. Arthur’s eyes darken and a scowl comes upon his face, his tone turning vicious, “he made it clear that you would not be mine, unless a price you could not imagine was paid. He gave me a choice that was not a choice at all. I refused, I treated him to reconsider, but he would not be moved. Princess, you must understand, his mind may have been gone but he knew what he was threatening. And he would have done it, I am sure of that.”

“What was the choice?” she pushes, because she needs to know. Arthur searches her face for signs that she wants to hear this, and he finds them.

“I lacked the blood of Old Valyria,” he smiles humorlessly, “and so I was not fit to father children upon you.” He pauses for a moment, and Rhaegar feels a sickness building in her stomach. “So I might marry you, but he would sire your children. Two sons and two daughters, to replace the children lost to him.”

Rhaegar pulls her hands away from him, eyes falling to the dirt beneath her. It was not her shame, but it felt so nonetheless. Oberyn was right about one thing - there was a disease in House Targaryen. It had hurt her. It had hurt Arthur, and Prince Oberyn as well. 

“So he had you join the Kingsguard instead, when you refused,” she says, simply to fill the space that had gone on for too long.

He does not seem to want to, but he gives her the truth nonetheless. “No, Princess. He bid me go home. He said he would make me a match elsewhere, likely inside of Dorne. It was - he was terrifying. I could not have left you there...to his desires. I would rather have died than seen you defenseless to Aerys, Rhaegar.”

The sun beats down on them, the breeze swaying the tall grass, singing the intoxicating song of pure, undisturbed nature. This place, it had always been mystifyingly attractive to Rhaegar, a magic thrumming beneath the tragedy that weighed atop of it. Now, they were likely adding to the horror, but there was some healing bubbling up beneath them. Only Summerhall could give them the freedom to move forward, she truly believes that.

“I asked to swear myself to you, as a shield, and no more. I swore on all that was dear to me that I would be faithful to House Targaryen for all of my life, so long as I could do so by your side. He laughed and said that he had caught winds of your treachery, which did not even exist at the time, and that I was a fool to think he would allow his heir the Sword of fucking Morning to collude with at her pleasure. The Kingsguard...it was my own request. There was a space open, had been for nigh on a year. It was a mad decision, Rhaegar. I knew that. But it seemed the only one left to me.” 

Minutes passed them by, nary a word passing. Rhaegar turns his words over in her head, in her heart, and she does not look at him until she feels prepared. If her eyes are glazed with unshed tears, then that was simply honest, and he deserves the same honesty he had given.

He tracks her face, and his hands abortively tense as if to reach out to her, but thinks better of it at the final moment. 

She has one last question, however.

“Why did you not tell me?” she asks, voice decimated with grief. “We never kept secrets.”

“No,” Arthur admits, but his shoulders were already lighter. He had carried this burden for such a time. “But you were not willing to speak to me. I understood that, of course, but it gave me time to think.” Arthur gives her his gaze, and their eyes lock, hardly blinking. “At the time, Aerys was not so mad. There were moments that he was nearly...nearly as he was before. When he was making the arrangements between yourself and the Prince, he was almost the man he had once been. I thought perhaps the madness had passed him by, and that there could still be healing between the two of you. The realm sorely needed it, because it needs _you._ I did not believe there was anything to come of me driving yet another stake between you and your father.”

He takes a deep breath, turning his eyes to the sky. Clouds had begun to gather, not dark with rain, simply providing shade. The heat broke as well, the ice between them cracking along with it.

“Prince Oberyn. I’ve known him since we were children. He was always...intelligent. Sharp, witty. Strong. He seemed a decent match for you. I thought that perhaps. With time.”

“That I would love him, and forget you,” Rhaegar finishes his thought for him.

“Yes, Princess,” he admits, wincing. “That you would be happy.”

And that was the core of it, was it not. Arthur was a rare man capable of great sacrifice. He put the wellbeing of others before himself often, as a knight was meant to do. But he did not always _know_ what was best for others, even if he thought he did.

“Well I am not,” she says neutrally. 

He purses his full lips. “No, you are not.”

“Neither are you,” she pushes on, and he does not even bother to respond. His displeasure was obvious. “Did it ever occur to you,” she says conversationally, “that our happiness might be tied up with each other’s?”

He barks out an incredulous laugh. “Certainly mine is tied in with yours, Princess. I have never doubted that.”

“No, it is only my own devotion you doubted,” she keeps her voice level, no true anger present, and lifts herself to take a perch on his knees. When he does not protest, she truly moves into his lap, bending her legs so that she was entirely on top of him, placing her arms around his neck.

“Rhaegar,” he warns, duty and desire warring in his voice.

“Arthur,” she replies, no such conflict present in hers, running the edges of his hair through her hands. The sweat from his hard work made the strands damp, and he shivers when her nails scratch his scalp. When she tilts his head up, he wraps his thick, strong arms around her, even though a battle of will remains raging across his handsome face.

“Do you still love me?” she asks, perhaps unnecessarily. His face goes blank in surprise, the uncertainty erased completely.

“I do. I always have. I always will. You are my entire heart,” he insists, caging her to his chest to punctuate the severity of his words. She smiles at him, and the sun breaks through the clouds once more, highlighting the contours of his face, the one that held some hope and joy in it, instead of the omnipresent misery and sacrifice. 

“Then nothing else matters,” she says, with frighteningly simple finality. Their lips touch, truly touch, for the first time in years, and they do not separate until warm raindrops begin to beat against their skin.  
.  
.  
.

Rhaenys had been fussy since their arrival, and caring for her took up most of the three companions' time and energy for two entire days following Rhaegar’s conversation with Arthur. She was a fascinating little girl, and what brought her comfort changed from hour to hour.

“Hullo, luv,” Mallora coos at her, which soothes her for a time, until she begins kicking in frustration, and will not stop.

“And so were the sights Queen Alyssane saw,” Rhaegar sings, her travelling harp providing the accompanying tune. Rhaenys enjoys that, until her cries drown out Rhaegar’s plucking.

“You are flying, little dragon!” Arthur laughs, holding Rhaenys above his head and moving her through the air. The girl shrieks in joy, until she begins to shriek in anger.

By the time they come to in the firepit for supper, hearty rabbit soup courtesy of Arthur’s traps and Mallora’s foraging, it is all Rhaegar can do to rest with her back to Arthur’s chest, exhausted, while Rhaenys went blessedly silent as she drank from Mallora. 

“I will take the girl for the night,” Mallora states, because Rhaenys would not calm in the arms of either Rhaegar or Arthur for the entire second half of the day. 

“That would be best,” Rhaegar murmurs from where she was curled up. Arthur’s legs were stretched out in front of them, and he rubbed her arms until her world had reduced to the flickers of warmth from the fire and the comfort of his embrace.

“Rhaegar, we have a visitor,” Arthur interrupts her bliss, one hand moving to the blade next to him, and she cracks an eye open. Mallora stands as well, holding the babe close to her for safety, as an old woman in ghostly green floated towards them. Her hair was shockingly white, more closely resembling the Targaryen silver in her old age than the brown tresses of her youth had. 

“Dear Aunt Jenny,” Rhaegar greets warmly, gasping when she rises, and Arthur retreats from his stance of murderous intent once he realizes just who their visitor is.

Rhaegar kisses the woman on both of her cheeks, delighted at this surprise. She introduces her to Mallora, whose ignorance on the significance of Jenny of Oldstones was refreshing for the crone.

“I fear my daughter is not in the best of moods,” Rhaegar jests, energized as she usually was by the appearance of her distant relative. Family was complicated to Targaryens, but with Jenny, it was almost easy. They shared grief and love in a way that Aerys and Rhaella never did with Rhaegar. “But I wish for you to meet Rhaenys, my firstborn.”

There was an eerie quality to Jenny that discomfited Rhaegar’s companions, but something about her captivated all those with Targaryen blood, it seemed. Even those who hated her, such as Aerys, were nonetheless obsessed with her. Rhaenys settles, oddly calm considering the tantrum she has been throwing, eyes fixed firmly on Jenny. Jenny does not coo, as all the others had, but merely looks back. Then, she kisses the child, and Rhaenys falls to sleep so soundly that Rhaegar’s gentle rocking does not wake her.

“You have brought a newborn Targaryen to Summerhall,” Jenny notes, and Rhaegar nods. “This land has been cursed since the fire, but with each life you bring here, it will heal it. And one day, a child of your blood will raise it from the ashes to glory.”

Arthur drew a disbelieving breath, but Rhaegar was hypnotized. “Did the dwarf tell you so?”

“She did.” Rhaegar kisses her aunt for the news. Mallora took the babe then, and made for the cottage on Rhaegar’s urging.

“I fear it will be much time before I have another child,” Rhaegar confesses, once the nurse has left, “for my husband and I share the coldest of beds.” Thinking of Oberyn saddens her. 

“That may be true,” Jenny agrees, but her eyes were not on Rhaegar any longer. Instead, it was Arthur she beheld, and who she came close to. “But the witch did not mention any husband of yours. It was this knight she spoke of, of a love reawoken from its slumber. Did you not dream it, Rhaegar?”

Rhaegar moves as if in a daze towards Arthur, who parts his lips without speaking.

“Yes,” she says without daring to breathe lest she break the spell over them, “last night. I dreamt you held a bright sword, Arthur, and that another placed their hand on it, and that you passed it to them. I dreamt that you rode with Dawn, and brought behind you the night sky and it’s stars. I dreamt...that we made love. I woke with your name on my lips.”

“I dream of making love to you often, Princess,” Arthur admits, and did not look the least bit ashamed. “I dream of you holding a child that we made in your arms, but those are only my fantasies.”

“Are they?” Jenny asks, and Rhaegar rebels against the idea that they are. They have suffered enough, she thinks with every deafening beat of her heart. They deserve sweetness, even if it is as fleeting as fire.

“They do not need to be only thus.”

Arthur seems hesitant then. “You have your husband, Princess.”

“Forget my husband,” Rhaegar says, unthinking, uncaring, “we have loved each other longer and better. Let us promise ourselves to each other, Arthur. Let Jenny bind us together with the old magic of Summerhall.”

He did not need even a moment longer. When it came to her, he could not resist his heart. “Yes,” he agrees, joining their hands together, eyes fixed in determination, “yes, Rhaegar.”

After that, it does not take long. They kneel to the ground facing one another, and Jenny weaves the flowers from her basket through their hair and intertwined hands. The bonfire should have descended by then, but it only grew stronger, feeding on the crackling energy surrounding them, jumping to heights it would not naturally have done.

“In this life and the next, you alone are mine,” she swears, not the vows of the Seven, but words unearthed from the bottom of her heart.

He does the same. “For all of my days and whatever follows, I serve only you.”

Jenny sings then, the saddest song either of them has ever heard, and Rhaegar sheds a few tears, but they never break the look they share.

Arthur kisses her and wipes away her tears, and when they look up from one another, Jenny has vanished into the light mist of the night, as if she truly was a ghost after all.

“She’s gone,” Arthur says, in wonder.

“Yes,” Rhaegar replies, and unceremoniously shoves him on his back, pushing his tunic up while feverishly kissing down the exposed column of his neck. 

They tear each other’s clothes away in a frenzy, until they were both as bare as the day they were born, and without wasting another moment, Arthur turns her onto her back while spreading her legs with a firm grip of his hand, claiming her mouth deeply, and after tracing his cock through the wetness of her, breaching her to the hilt.

“Arthur,” she sighs wantonly, full to the brim. It does not hurt, and he is not gentle, like he had been in all the sweet fumblings of their youth, those times when they had carefully avoided what they now relish in. He grunts, and bends her almost in half, until she cries for him at every thrust. His body is hard all over, and he rubs at her secret spot every time he sheathes himself. It is the greatest pleasure, and Rhaegar could not believe she had waited for it for so long.

It is over fast, the years of pent up longing making sure of that. She tightens around him like a vice, and they peak at the same moment, collapsing into each other. When he comes to himself again, he moves to get off of her, but she brings her knees up and squeezes his hips to keep him close, wishing to feel him inside of her for longer.

“I’ve missed you, my love,” she could hear herself murmur, his living, breathing body shaking with emotion on top of her, and then the blackness of sleep claimed her. The last thing she saw was a red star, making its way across the expanse of sky above.  
.  
.  
.

She awoke in the comfort of her own bed, alone and sore. She had not felt so worn since the day she delivered Rhaenys, and before that, her wedding night, but like both of those times, the soreness was delicious and punctuated with joy.

“Arthur,” she calls softly, but he does not come. He was outside, then, she concluded, working away at something. That was disappointing, but not overly so.

Mallora is at her same place as she was every morning, and Rhaegar seizes Rhaenys upon seeing her, mouthing at her baby face until the child gurgles her laughter. They spin around the room, mother and daughter, and it makes Rhaegar wish to write her little girl a song all her own. She will, she resolves.

Mallora laughs, and the two women break fast together.

“Ser Arthur brought in water and left coal heating for you, so that you might have a bath,” she simpers, and Rhaegar rolls her eyes happily. _This is how the morning after my wedding would have gone, if I had married Arthur._ It was a good morning, but then, the morning after her wedding to Oberyn had also been enjoyable. They had talked and laughed and debated one another, she recalls.

There was no use dwelling on the past, she thinks, as she sets to warming up the bath water.

She has not been submerged in it but a few minutes when footsteps she recognizes come from the short stairwell and into her room.

“You left me to wake up alone,” she hums, leaning forward so that Arthur could see her bare back and not much else.

“Apologies, Princess,” the grin was clear in his voice, “I wished to perform all the work of the day as soon as possible, so that I might return to you.” He sits on the edge of the tub, and trails his fingers down her spine, curving around her shoulders until he holds her neck in his grip. He uses his hand around her throat to tilt her head back until he can see her eyes, and then leans down to give her a sweet kiss.

“Good morning,” he murmurs against her lips, and then withdraws. She pouts, leaning back against the edge he sat on so that her head rests on his thigh.

“Rhaenys is much improved,” she tells him, and he nods. “Yes, I saw her just now. I believe she will be crawling sooner than later.” Rhaegar voices her agreement, but there are other matters on her mind.

“Take off your clothes and come in here with me,” she gently requests, no artifice in her voice, and he complies. She watches him undress without pretense, and he is already half hard from the attention by the time he moves into the tub, which accommodates them nicely enough. He takes the soap in his hand and begins to rinse it over her body, eager to serve, and she lets herself enjoy the contact.

“Do you have any regrets?” she asks while he performs a utilitarian cleaning of his own body.

“No,” he answers immediately, “my Kingsguard vows mean nothing in comparison to how I feel for you, and anyways, I already broke them when I joined your plot against Aerys. Do you?”

“No,” she answers, just as simply. “It was inevitable.”

He likes the sound of that, that is obvious when he wraps his arms around her waist and leaves soft, sensual kisses across her shoulders. “I do have one regret, actually.”

She knows he is merely playing, but her stomach tightens regardless. “Oh?” she asks, attempting to come across coy.

“Yes, I regret that I lacked patience. There was much I dreamed of doing if I ever had you naked again. Alas, the moment overtook me.”

She turns around in the bath, holding herself on her knees and leaning over him, swollen tits sudsy and seemingly attractive to him. She reaches down in the water and grasps him, slowly working him to full hardness. He pulls her into his lap, kissing her briefly, hands roaming and exploring her body to reacquaint himself with every inch of her.

“Your fingers, please,” she requests, remembering the immense pleasure he had given her at his hands over the years. His fingers were thicker and longer than hers, and attempting to give her own body the same treatment he once did had only resulted in frustration.

He smirks and slips two in at once. She is no longer the maiden she had been, and she was unbelievably aroused, so that intrusion was fine, and she begins to rock herself on his hand. 

“How do you feel?” he asks, nudging his nose along her collarbone. She only nods, and doubles her strokes. He takes her nipple into his mouth as a response, and laughs around her when she gasps and begins to stutter with the rhythm in her hips. They had been so sensitive since the birth…

Which was why she wasn’t surprised when she felt the familiar release of breastmilk, and opened her eyes to laugh at him. The laughter died when he met her eyes, swallowing it all down purposely and lapping at where the remnants of it lay a mess on her chest.

“Oh Arthur,” she moans, and moves to sink down onto him in the now lukewarm water. He stops her before she can even begin.

“Out of the tub. I’ll have you on the bed,” he commands, no room for questioning, and she follows, drying herself off and retreating to the bed. She laid down, on display, and he reached for her legs. She thought he would simply mount her then and there, but evidently, he is eager to make up for the patience he had lacked the night before. 

Instead, he pulls her to the edge of the bed and sinks to his knees, where he feasts on her. She throws her head back and mewls for him, begging him to keep on, fucking his face when it wasn’t quite right. Prince Oberyn had enjoyed doing this as well, she thought, and he was of course a master of his craft. Arthur did not have anywhere near the experience that the Martell Prince did, but he had only done this with Rhaegar, and so he was tuned to her body and hers alone. That gave her a possessive thrill, and when she moved herself away from him, it was to lie on her side and bask in her peak.

He comes to sit next to her, and touches her body with something akin to reverence. “To see you in the daylight like this...Rhaegar, I cannot even describe how you affect me. You are beyond words. You are the Maiden’s very image.”

“You have already had me, there is no need for seduction any longer,” she jokes, but Arthur does not find it funny.

“Do not say anything like that,” he says with vehemence, “not even in jest, Rhaegar. I spent three years holding every feeling back, watching you suffer and not being able to say a word or lift a finger. I won’t do that any longer.”

“I won’t ask you to,” she promises, and then straddles him, taking him inside to ride him. The entry was easy, because he had prepared her well, his diligence impressive and sexy. Arthur was good at everything he attempted, so naturally he was also a thorough lover.

“Yes, that’s perfect,” he groans, head thrown back, and she uses his shoulders to try and get the rhythm right. It is incredible, but it’s not quite _perfect_ , and she thinks the bath has left them just a bit too slippery for it to work this way. There is a better way, she thinks, so she stops dead on his cock. His eyes fly open and he looks at her questioningly.

“I wish to do this in a different position,” she explains, and he moves to turn her over to lay her underneath him. She laughs lightly, and stops him. “No, not like that either.” She pulls off, turning and stretching her arms in front of her but keeping her hips angled up for him to slide into her easily from behind. She looks back when he does not join her with haste, as she assumed he would, and finds him regarding her thoughtfully.

“You do not enjoy this manner of lovemaking?” she asks, beginning to sit up.

“I do,” he reassures her, “I just did not think you would, is all. It is not so common for women to enjoy this.”

She huffs at his overthinking. “I enjoyed what we did the night you returned from slaying the Smiling Knight. I also enjoyed—,” she stops, not knowing if she should finish that sentence. The sex had made her mouth loose.

“It is fine,” he reassures her, although a hint of a crease came into his brow, “I know better than most that you have been wedded and bedded, Princess.”

She shivers, the arousal starting to overpower whatever the deeper conversation they need to have is. “So let us try this and if we both enjoy it then we will continue. If not, then we won’t,” she proposes, this time purposely seductive. She leans forward again, arching her back to an impossible degree, swaying her hips slowly. He can not resist, and crowds her in, one hand on her hip to steady her, one on himself, as he slid into her at an angle too pleasurable for words. She moans long and throaty, whimpering when he starts a tempo deep and slow. All his prior reservations flew out the window, as she thought they might. The wet truths of sex had a way of making everything else fall away.

“Rhaegar,” he breathes, as he moves at a maddening pace, hands comfortably gripping her waist as if they’d been bedmates for longer than a mere day. They know each other well, that was all. She knew him enough to allow him his slowness, to savor each drag in or out, reestablishing their relationship as something visceral. Arthur prefers to take his time, and Rhaegar wishes to please him better than anything he had ever felt, to make up for the years they had lost.

She whispers sweet nothings to him, snatches of love and adoration that he eats up greedily, leaning over her to cup her breasts and kiss her as best they can manage, technique sacrificed in the interest of simply being close.

“I won’t spill inside you again,” he assures her, as if she wanted him to restrain himself.

“Why not?” she whines, and he rumbles a laugh from deep inside his ribcage. The vibrations affected them where they were joined, making their movements more urgent. 

“Because I might put a bastard in you, Princess,” he reminds her kindly, as if she had been made too dimwitted by their lovemaking that she had not considered such a simple possibility.

“Not a bastard,” Rhaegar disagrees, turning her head as best she was able so that he could see her face, “for it was the Old Gods Jenny married us in front of us yesterday. I did not realize it myself until this morning, but of course, in hindsight it is obvious.” Arthur’s thrusts slow, processing what she is saying. She presses on, keeping her hips circling to ensure the pleasure did not come to an end. “And anyways, I wish to have a child from you. You will be the father of the Prince that was Promised. I always knew you would be, Arthur.”

He was silent for a moment, before leaning down to mouth at her ear. “Is that why you lie with me? To conceive the Prince?” He did not question that he would be the father, though, which soothed Rhaegar. He had always left the matter of the prophecy to her, but he believed her when she told him portions of it.

“No,” she laughs at the thought, “it is because I desire you, my love. The sensation of your cock within me is more sacred to me than the Seven-Pointed Star itself. That the Prince be born of our love is a good omen, I believe.”

He picks up the pace then, and she reaches down to touch the pleasure nub at the top of her sex. “My peak is near,” she informs him, wrapping her free hand into his hair behind her, a luxury she was able to do because of how comfortably he held her up. 

She moans her love for him when she reaches her end, and he follows without much delay, falling to his side and pulling her with him. When they catch their breath, he nips at her face until she turns to give him a kiss.

“I love you, Rhaegar,” he says, the weight of a thousand tender moments, past and future, raw in his words. 

Before long, they are drowning in each other once more.  
.  
.  
.

They spend two weeks thus, making love often, although Rhaegar believes that there is already a babe in her from the very first night. She did not mention her suspicions to Arthur just yet, in case she was wrong, but her dreams rarely lied.

The rest of the time they hunted, bathed, feasted, and had lively conversations with Mallora. Rhaenys had changed after Jenny’s visit, and was returned to her agreeable sweet self.

Rhaegar wrote her a song, a mix of lullabies in the Common Tongue and in High Valyrian, and played it for the girl often. Mallora cajoled Arthur into dancing with her, and he did so, an uncharacteristic lightness surrounding him. She likes to think it was her doing, but truthfully, she was no better than him in regards to their solemnity.

Still, it is the happiest she’s been in a long time.

There is one thing that weighs on her mind still, that rises above all the others. Prince Oberyn remains in Sunspear, as far as she knows, and with him, the support of Dorne. Without the southernmost Kingdom, the Great Council she wished to call was little more than a fantasy. She already doubted that the Arryn’s or the Tully’s would join them, considering Lord Jon’s remoteness, and the promise she had made to Brandon Stark in exchange for his support of her. There were many minor Houses who she suspected would remain with her father, opposing his displacement, particularly those closer to the Faith. She was a woman, after all. And Tywin’s loyalty meant less than the wind - she did not know if he hated Aerys enough to court her favor. Especially considering she had plans to marry Jaime to Princess Elia, in order to maintain some sort of control over House Lannister…

But that was not the entirety of her conflict over her wayward husband. Now more than ever, she was not sure she had made the correct choice in keeping her plans away from him.

 _My brother is wise, but he lacks patience,_ Prince Doran had told her, behind closed doors. _It would be best if he remained unknowing for now. I will inform him, when the time is right, and he will support you alongside all of Dorne._

That conversation was a lifetime ago. Oberyn had not always been kind, or polite to her. But he had been honest, at least, and she had not given him the same due. The guilt Rhaegar feels over that surprises her.

“Is the water cool?” she asks from the banks of the river where Arthur is submerged in his hunt for fish, bare upper half turning in surprise at her voice. She needed to take her mind off of her Dornish Prince, and so she sought Arthur out.

“It is pleasant enough,” he answers, grinning wolfishly at the sight of her sliding the straps of her dress down her arms. “Come and find out for yourself, Princess.” So she does, stripping to her smallclothes, sliding into the welcoming water and his open arms.

They exchange a few words and kisses, and then he pulls down the last of her clothing and has her right there, allowing her to float on her back while he holds her body to his, the both of them laughing at the peculiar sensations of being in water while they fuck. They swam after it was over, wordlessly touching one another and listening to the sounds of nature. When a twig splits, Rhaegar looks up sharply, but Arthur assures her it is likely a bush pig, which were plentiful in the area. 

Her stomach rumbled, and they dressed for their return to the cottage, where they ate bread Mallora had baked in the small oven with some fish they had set to dry a few days prior. Rhaegar’s head ailed her, so she begged her leave, taking Rhaenys with her for a nap in the early afternoon.

When she awoke, it was to raised voices arguing from outside of the four walls she was in. Arthur’s was one of them. The sound of the other stopped her heart.

She flees down the stairs, Rhaenys confused and crying at having been woken up so suddenly, and finds exactly what she feared she would.

“Will you not raise Dawn against me once more? Come now, Ser Arthur, we both know you have it in you,” Prince Oberyn himself sneers, his spear drawn and dripping on the pointed end. Arthur’s basic chainmail draped his body, which gave Rhaegar no small measure of relief. Oberyn’s deadly reputation was earned. 

“You hardly deserve her, my Prince,” Arthur responds, voice as steel as the blade he rested his right hand on the pommel of, still encased in its scabbard. That meant nothing. Arthur drew faster than any man she’d ever seen.

“And you deserve the Princess, is it? Do not lie to me, Sword of Morning,” Oberyn raises his spear to a challenge, “for I watched you two fuck with my own two eyes, in a stream not far away. It seems Aerys did not lie, and my wife’s lover _is_ Dornish after all! Tell me, Dayne, is she the man, and you the mistress?”

Arthur does draw his sword then, and Rhaegar runs out of the door frame with Rhaenys still in her arms, placing herself in sight of both men.

“That’s enough,” she says, keeping her voice as commanding and level as possible given the circumstances. The sight of Rhaenys softens the eyes of both men, and Oberyn lowers his spear. Arthur sheaths his sword once more, albeit reluctantly.

“Oberyn,” she starts, and the look of disgust and betrayal he gave her shocks her.

“You told me a sweet lie, Princess, when you said you never had Ser Arthur. Some horseshit about his honor being too great. You’ve taken him a thousand times, and I was none the wiser, was it not the case?”

“That was not the case,” she says, refusing to bend her eyes in shame. “I did not have Arthur until a fortnight ago, Prince Oberyn.” Rhaegar sucks in a deep breath, knowing she owed him some explanation. 

“You left me, and our daughter,” she starts, reproach in her tone, “you left us in a place where neither of us were safe, at a time when the two of us were defenseless but for the safety Ser Arthur’s sword offered us. You should not have done that.”

He looks mollified, as if he knew that choice had been wrong, and would have done differently given the chance. “No, I should not have done that.”

She is pleased by his agreement. “But there is much I should not have done either. I would explain some things to you, husband, if you will hear it.”

He looks as if he will object, but Rhaenys begins to fuss just then, distracting them. Arthur moves to take her, attempting to soothe her as he had oft done before, but Oberyn stops him in his tracks. 

“Let me have her,” he says, eyes fixed on the little child, and Rhaegar looks pointedly at the spear hanging at his side. Oberyn secures it to his back once more, and Rhaegar holds Rhaenys out then, who reaches with her tiny little hands for her father. Oberyn takes her easily, folding her into his arms to her great gurgling happiness.

“Sweet girl,” he murmurs, and kisses her on the cheek, “Baba missed you very much.” Rhaegar’s heart melts.

“Will you hear it?” she asks again, softly and beseechingly.

“I will,” he agrees, and they sit at the fire pit, Rhaenys dozing off. Arthur remains on the opposite side from Rhaegar, which is likely for the best. Oberyn turns his eyes to Rhaegar, and Rhaegar knows she must do this perfectly, or else lose him forever. 

“We came here for an excuse to remove ourselves from Court, but there was another reason as well,” she begins, but Oberyn interrupts her.

“My uncle wrote to say that you came here with Oswell in your company. I do not see him here.”

He is too smart for his own good, and she rues his quick thinking. “No, he is not here. He is in Harrenhal, and hopefully returning by now. There is to be a tourney there soon.”

“A tourney,” he repeated, disdainfully. For Prince Oberyn had not ridden in a tourney since he had injured young Willas Tyrell beyond repair. He scorned them, as far as Rhaegar knew. 

“A tourney,” she emphasizes slowly, meaningfully, “with a purse larger than any we have seen before, in a castle that is situated centrally enough that all in the Seven Kingdoms might ride for it. One far enough from King’s Landing that Varys’s birds will be easily identifiable.”

Oberyn mulls it over. “A tourney to attract most, if not all, of the Great Houses of Westeros,” he says, voicing his thought process, “especially those with young men, or Lords, who yearn for some glory and wealth, through the favor of the Crown.”

“Indeed,” she confirms simply, and when the pieces fell together, a mixture of emotions fell across his face.

“You intend to call a Great Council and depose your father,” he says flatly, and she does not voice her agreement, but it was obvious he was correct. “I asked you, perhaps a hundred times, if you would consider doing so, and you always denied it.”

This would be the painful part. One of them, at least.

“I broached this topic as early as our betrothal negotiations, with your brother, Prince Doran. It was only a possibility then. He gave me the support of Dorne, and I asked for his advice on how to approach the topic with you. He said that I should not just yet. That I should leave it to him. I did not know you at all, then, so I trusted him.” She pauses for a moment, but forges on because there was no way to go except forward. “After our marriage, at the beginning, there was a trust being built between us. I thought I would speak openly with you soon enough, once we went to Dragonstone and there was no fear of being spied upon. Then, of course…”

“Then King’s Landing happened,” he supplies, and the heaviness between them was felt by all.

“Yes, my Prince. After that, I was not sure any longer. Our lives hung in the balance - mine, and those of most of the Kingsguard, of Lords high and low, of Prince Doran as well. And now, of course, you and Rhaenys would not be safe either. I know it was wrong of me to keep this from you, husband. I wished to tell you many times. Each time you asked me, my resistance fell weaker and weaker. But I could not endanger the work I was doing, not for anything. The realm hangs in the balance, and my family in the very center.”

Oberyn bites his bottom lip, his eyebrows furrowed. “You do not trust me, is the core of it.”

She sighs, and makes to speak, but he beats her to it. “I am not saying that you should have trusted me. Much of my behavior I am not proud of. It is just that you do not, is all.”

“I am not proud of myself, either,” she admits, then turns to the other man sitting in the circle. “Arthur, might you leave us for some time?”

“Of course,” he answers, looking worried but ultimately understanding. When he was gone, she turned her eyes back to her husband, who held their daughter between them. They were a family, she thinks in surprise, even if they did not act as such.

“I am not proud that you saw what you saw, Oberyn. Regardless of the situation, you do not deserve to have an unfaithful wife.”

He could not help but point out the obvious. “I have not been a faithful husband myself, Princess. I intended to be, for some time. But that is not the reality of things.”

“Quite,” she acknowledges, but did not take the boon he was offering, “you were faithful for a time. At the beginning...we were well-matched, I believed. I know you may think that I loved Arthur always, and perhaps I have, but I was prepared to put him behind me, as we must always be with the past. He knew that, and accepted it. I wished...I wished for us to love one another. Mayhaps it was a selfish wish, for many married couples do not love one another, but it was my impression that we might.”

“Indeed,” he murmurs.

“After all of this, when we came to Summerhall, I did not know when or if you would return. Fear and pain have ruled my life for some time now, you can imagine, with Aerys as my father. Arthur and I had a chance to finally be honest with each other after many years of difficulty. Aerys threatened him with the same threat he made you, that he would get children upon me, but Arthur lacked the strength of Dorne behind him to protest such a perversion, as you have, and he swore himself to the Kingsguard to ensure he could protect me if needed. So yes, I took him into my bed. It is not unlikely that there is a babe in me, a son that will marry Rhaenys, who will place Martell blood to the Iron Throne. I am not asking for your forgiveness for this, Oberyn. But I am asking for your forgiveness for forcing you into this court of intrigue that you never wished for, and for not being honest with you. That was ill done, and I would understand your choice following, whatever it may be.”

They sit together for a time, all of Rhaegar’s deep held truths regarding him spilled out between them. She hunches her shoulders, feeling particularly vulnerable, and Oberyn does not look particularly pleased, but he does appear thoughtful. 

“I will allow Ser Dayne this bastard, so long as it is the only one. It is a deserved punishment for me, I believe,” he finally breaks the silence. She vocalizes her agreement softly, trying to preserve the air of resigned acceptance he has ushered in.

He leans back, exhaustion in his shoulders. “What will happen when Aerys is gone from the Iron Throne?”

“I will not set you aside,” she promises, having known for a time that she would need to verbalize this sentiment, “you are my lawful husband, and the father of Rhaenys. You will be named a King Consort. Mayhaps it is still too early, but if you share my wish, we might have more children. Only if you wish, however. You are hardly a bed slave.”

If some hurt crept into her tone when she repeated the words he had once used, so be it. He looked at her then, true feelings masked in his dark eyes.

“You would have more children from our union?” he asks, tone empty.

She smiles sadly. “Mayhaps it does not seem this way, but I am quite fond of you, Prince Oberyn. At the very least, I would have us share friendship. But yes - I love Rhaenys more than my own life already, and I can see that you love her as well. When Aerys is gone, if the Gods are good enough to allow this plot to reach success, there might yet be some happiness for us.”

“And Arthur?” he asks, naming the cloud that hung over them.

“I am afraid that I am no longer willing to go without Arthur,” she confesses, honestly, “but you know better than most that love is not constrained so easily. At the very least, we will always be discreet. I will never shame you, husband.”

“As you say, Princess,” he agrees tiredly, the words he had uttered many times before, the very words he had imparted before leaving King’s Landing entirely. A panic began in her chest, when he rose to hand her Rhaenys’s little body, and approached the horse he has tied nearby.

“Oberyn,” she begins, terrified she had ruined her one chance at creating an understanding between them.

“There is an inn in the town nearby,” he says, turning but not looking at her. “I will remain there for some time, and come to see Rhaenys during the days. When Ser Oswell returns, we will ride for King’s Landing together.”

A wild thought crosses her mind. _I would show you Summerhall, husband, and the magic that it contains. I believe you will understand._ She dismissed it, futile as it was.

Rhaegar watches Oberyn ride away, their daughter clutched to her chest, with no small amount of melancholy. She could not have asked him to stay, she knew, but it did not change the fact that for some mad reason, she desperately wished he had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: harrenhal & the intro of notorious doer of bad bitchery, lyanna stark


	4. Harrenhal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the tourney of Harrenhal, there are no true victors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> accidentally took 10 years to write this but i definitely intend to finish it, just a question of when! kind of a setup chapter + intro for lyanna :)

“Gods, I am out of practice,” Rhaegar huffs, the relief of exertion lining every muscle in her body. Prince Oberyn laughs alongside her, equally breathless.

Pycelle had warned her against this manner of riding, that the pregnancy would not allow it. But the challenge in her husband’s eyes earlier had her casting away the Grand Maester’s warning easily. He was an idiot, and Rhaegar did not intend to keep him in his position much longer. Oberyn knew many a maester from his time in Oldtown who he believed would be much better for the position, and Rhaegar would defer to her husband to choose a replacement when that time came.

As they trot forward, slowing the horses down from the gallops they had indulged in for the past hour or so, the sense of unfettered joy began to bleed away.

“It is a shame the weather of Harrenhal does not promise sunshine,” the Prince says, concealing his true meaning, as the great castle appears in front of them. Since being informed of her plans, Oberyn had proved a most resourceful partner in crime, his zest for treason unmatched. Above them the sun was setting, already hidden behind the Kingspyre Tower, and it was a picture eerily similar to the final view of Harren who Burned, right before her ancestor Aegon the Conqueror had delivered fire and blood upon the arrogant old man.

“Yes, it is not promising, and that is quite disappointing,” she sighs, thoughts returning to the unfortunate circumstances they found themselves in.

Aerys had not left the Keep in so long that Rhaegar had not even considered him traveling to attend this event as a possibility. She had been foolish to think it would be so easy. The Spider would lose his head at the soonest opportunity, she vowed with a strong thirst for blood running through her veins, which she quickly admonished herself for. The eunuch still had uses.

Their party caught up to them, and they made the rest of their trip in silence. 

When they finally arrive on the grounds, they disperse, Oberyn seeking out his sister immediately, and Rhaegar walks with Arthur to stable the horses. They had not been alone for the entire trip, and stolen moments in King’s Landing only came at extreme risk, so to even stand next to each other brought a smile to Rhaegar’s face.

“Ser Grandison has died, and Ser Darry holds his vigil,” he informs her conversationally, which was not much of a loss to either of them. Harlan had already been an old man by the time she was born, a good enough friend to King Aegon, her great-grandfather, but not much more.

“May he rest,” she replies, and, upon noting that the stables were empty save for them, drew him into the nearest dark corner and brought their lips together.

“Gods, I’ve missed you,” he tells her between desperate kisses, one hand supporting the small of her back and the other resting on the bump of her belly. She was five moons along, and while she was smaller than many other women might be, it was still beginning to be a burden. He rubs at her back and she sighs into his mouth, moving to rest her head on the steel of his armor. They merely embrace, and still she thinks she might cry from how dearly she has missed such intimate moments.

There is laughter outside, what sounded like boys playing at sticks, so Arthur moves away to finish stabling the horses. Rhaegar makes to leave the stable, but a ringing righteous fury interrupts the night.

“That’s my father’s man you’re kicking!” a woman, or perhaps a girl, booms over the courtyard, and Rhaegar peers from the edge of the door, Arthur popping up and looking from over her shoulder as well.

A girl on the cusp of womanhood, dressed in maiden’s white, thick dark locks free to the wind, stood over a young boy - no, a crannogman, small of stature, Rhaegar realized - with a wooden sword in her right hand, the other clasped over the throat of some squire.

“Do you enjoy taunting those weaker than you?” she levels at the squire she held captive, as well as two others. She threw the boy onto the ground, and did not wait for an answer. Instead, she raises her sword in a threatening gesture, at which the three squires scatter and run.

“Crazy bitch!” one of them yells as they flee, and the girl-woman turns to the body still on the ground.

“I apologize, Lord Reed. I recognize your sigil, but do not know your given name, I fear,” she says, holding her hand out to help the man up.

“Howland, my lady,” the man answers, voice rough for the wear, “and might I have yours? You are my savior, after all. I wish to give you my thanks properly.”

“Lyanna.” The name sounds like poetry to Rhaegar, who stores it away in her mind. “And you should not thank me. Those squires were without honor. I entreat you to join my family’s party, and extend to you the protection of House Stark, as House Reed may always rely on.”

“My lady,” the man Howland says, at a loss for words. He allows the girl to lead him away, likely towards the Stark tents, and out of earshot.

“That is without a doubt Brandon’s sister,” Arthur chuckles when they were alone once more, and then begins to trail his lips across her neck, tracing the shell of her ear with his tongue in the way she liked. “The Isle of Faces is nearby, Princess,” he murmurs, “might be we should pay the site a visit on the morrow. Just the two of us, to offer some prayer.”

“Indeed,” she responds, moving her head to the side so that he can lavish his affections on her neck, “perhaps we should.” Her mind was far gone, though, thinking on how Lyanna Stark had held her tourney sword like a warrior, and how even if the tourney had failed in its purpose, it did not need to be entirely a loss.  
.  
.  
.

“We were married in front of these Gods,” Rhaegar notes in wonder, enthralled by the deep red sap oozing from the faces carved into the trees surrounding them. The forest is silent but it seemed to be screaming, aching, shaking all around her.

“It is good that we do not defile such a sacred place,” Arthur grunts from where he lies atop the dark grass and beneath her body. A thrust of his hips reminds her of what they are doing, and she picks up the pace, keeping one arm wrapped to hold up her dress above her breasts and the other fixed on his bare chest, for balance.

“Fuck,” he moans, when she adds a drag to the end of her movements, and he pushes up her dress once more so that he can see the bump of their child while they make love. For some reason, he enjoys looking upon it, and she did not mind either. The strain in her thighs was beginning to make itself known, especially considering that she had spent the last few days riding on the back of a horse, so she moves her hands to pull him up to her, and he takes the hint quickly, lowering her down to the ground without breaking the time of his thrusts. 

“I find your strength so arousing, Arthur,” she whimpers when he places one arm at the side of her head for leverage, allowing her to latch her mouth onto his pronounced muscles.

“That much is obvious,” he grins devilishly, and takes a nipple into his mouth, causing her to cry out loudly and reach up to yank at his hair. He grabs and holds her wrists to the ground with one large hand, gentle yet restricting, and uses the other to touch her and drive her utterly mad.

She rides out her peak for what feels like ages, and he spills his seed inside of her with a hefty groan and an, “I love you,” breathed into her ear.

They catch their breath on the forest floor, hands running all over another, legs and arms entwined.

“The babe grows big,” Arthur marvels, touching his forehead against the bump of her womb, and then begins to speak directly to it, which was entirely endearing. “Hullo, babe. I cannot wait to meet you, whoever you might be.”

“He will be a son,” Rhaegar tells him patiently, and Arthur smiles at her from where he is. 

“I believe you, Princess. But seeing as this is the only child that will be born to us, can I not pretend at the normal curiosities of fatherhood?”

“Of course you can,” she touches his face, unbearably fond, raising his face for a kiss. 

They idle for as long as they can, before the time was such that they had to leave. The opening feast was upcoming, and they could not miss it, for Aerys had arrived that morning and Rhaegar did not wish to abandon Oberyn in the castle any longer, although he had his sister to keep him company.

Aerys made Rhaegar sit directly next to him at the opening feast, but he did not needle her or act inappropriately with her, more interested in observing his subjects and at times exclaiming whatever strange thought had come over him. That was a relief, for she could not appear weak in front of all these people whose support she sought. 

Instead, she merely observed as well. The person she was most curious about was easy enough to find, the only woman in a sea of men that populated the tables of the Winter Lords.

Lyanna Stark was soon to be a woman, and as fair as any Rhaegar had ever seen, but she was also utterly miserable. Her brothers as well as her betrothed were all brawny, with the exception of the smallest, who was still mostly a boy. Brandon Stark’s comely face rang loud above the others, a face that held most of the features Rhaegar normally appreciated, but for some reason had never truly swayed her towards the Stark heir. The same features on his sister Lyanna were much more pleasant, although arranged in a deep frown at this time.

Rhaegar requested leave to catch fresh air when Oberyn took Elia to the dance floor, and walked towards the Stark table on her way to the door, Arthur flanking.

“Princess Rhaegar,” Brandon greets her, dropping into a deep bow. _This man is drunk off his arse,_ Rhaegar notes with humor. Meeting Richard’s eyes over the table, she knew he was thinking the same, and his bright eyes twinkle with laughter.

“Lord Stark,” she replies kindly, and then the rest of the table bows as well. Robert barely inclines his head, which does not surprise her. He was not much for courtesies, her cousin.

“Cousin Robert, Lord Lonmouth, my Lords of Stark. And Lady Stark, I presume? I fear we have not had the pleasure.”

Lyanna had looked up when Rhaegar and Arthur had first arrived, her eyes going as wide as dinner plates, and then she had fixed her eyes on the table below her. When she was called by name, however, she had no choice but to raise her gaze.

“Your Grace,” she squeaks, such a contrast to how she had asserted herself in the courtyard but one night prior, “I am called Lyanna.”

“Lyanna,” Rhaegar finally had the opportunity to say it out loud, which she relished, “a beautiful name for a beautiful girl. You are the luckiest man, Lord Baratheon.” Rhaegar was not so lost in her own life and struggles that she had missed the news of the betrothal between her cousin and this girl. Lyanna blushes a deep red, but scowls at the naming of her betrothed. Robert thanks Rhaegar coolly, the hint of lust alongside a well of mistrust the appraisal she was accustomed to from him. 

“I am merely passing through on my quest for air,” she informs the table, and Brandon sits back down, leaning his arms on his muscular thighs.

“Let us not keep you, Your Grace,” he breezes, aiming a charming smile at some unfortunate soul behind her, “we will see more of each other, I am sure. When I’m knocking Dayne here off his horse.”

Arthur snorts. “Ever the dreamer, Stark.”

“Indeed he is,” Richard grins, purposely goading the Northman. He rose anyways, and proclaimed that he would join Rhaegar on her walk, as she had intended. She spares one last glance at Lady Lyanna, whose eyes were fixed on Arthur with an odd intensity, and then bid the table her farewell, departing quickly.

“Why did he come?” Richard inquires, once they were a safe distance from the Great Hall.

“The Spider whispers in his ears of my plots and plans, as he always has, that cunt,” Rhaegar responds truthfully, and Richard hummed in equal annoyance.

“I count the days until you behead that thrice-damned Lyseni fucker, Your Grace,” he jokes, and Arthur laughs. There was little humor in it, though.

“That is not all,” her white knight interjects, some reluctance in his voice, and she turns to see his face, “I did not know this before, Princess, but I spoke to my white cloak brothers today and there are rumors…” he trails off.

“What rumors?” The Knight of Skulls and Kisses asks, and Arthur looks at her apologetically. Perhaps if they had not been so entangled in one another, he would have known prior. Still, neither of them could bring themselves to regret anything.

“That Jaime Lannister will be named to the Kingsguard. Likely in the course of this tourney, as Lord Tywin is not present to object. I apologize, Princess, but if Barristan speaks truthfully, this is no rumor at all, but a near certainty.”

“Fuck,” Rhaegar says.

“Shit,” Richard curses as well.

“This changes everything,” Rhaegar bemoans in a huff of despair, and begins running mental calculations on how disastrous this will be for her plans.

“Must it be that bad?” Richard asks, slowly, pondering. “We had almost no leverage over the old man besides his...personal hatred. Now we have something valuable to give him. Give him back, I mean.”

Rhaegar smiles at him kindly. “That is one thing. But the plan was for Elia and Jaime to marry, to tie House Lannister to the throne somehow. Will House Martell accept a dishonored former Kingsguard? It was already a stretch with young Jaime’s age. I fear Doran will not like this, and that he might have her wed Lord Baelor after all, which would split the Dornish loyalties, as the Hightowers are like to keep with Aerys in defense of a man on the throne. Gods know they hope Viserys might replace me as the heir.”

“You speak wisely,” Richard muses, “but Viserys will gain more supporters the older he gets. Aerys has held his hand for so long out of understandable fear after your other siblings had perished, but there cannot be additional delays, Princess. I fear that your supporters will turn on you otherwise.”

“Although Aerys is the more present threat, Viserys must not take the throne either,” Arthur adds quietly. He gives Rhaegar a sympathetic glance. “I know you do not like it, Princess. But the boy has been kept from his father all his life, and yet he still shows concerning behavior. Westeros will not suffer two such Kings in a row.”

“Viserys is yet a child, and his disposition may still prove otherwise,” Rhaegar protests weakly, although she reluctantly sees Arthur’s point. “But the Crown drives even sane men mad. The risk is too dangerous, Arthur, you are correct. Once I birth this son, there will be options, and within a few moons of the birth I believe we should act. A male heir should make me more popular, I hate to say.”

“I do not envy your position,” Richard says gruffly, and gives her a kiss upon each cheek before returning to Hall. Rhaegar returns to her chambers, and grips Arthur’s hand for a moment before entering, awaiting Oberyn to give him the same updates.  
.  
.  
.

“Is all well, wife?” Oberyn asks her from where they sit in the royal box. Rhaegar had been up until this moment fixated on watching the Lannister twins, and heeds her husband’s implicit warning that her attentions are perhaps inappropriate.

“I apologize, my mind was elsewhere,” she mumbles, and considers excusing herself out of sheer boredom. The early rounds of a tourney were always dull, the weakest picking each other off, and none of the Kingsguard or true challengers would even ride until the following day. She needed to project strength however, so she squared her shoulders and attempted to look as regal as possible.

Her gaze drifted to the Stark family seated together. Lady Lyanna was missing, which was too bad.

“Does the Lord Stark tempt you?” Oberyn whispers in her ear. She reproaches him with a glare, and does not deign to answer. He grins, which she could see from the corner of her eye, and whispers to her again, “then it is as I thought. It is the lovely Lady Stark you search for.”

Her lips part in surprise. _He is too observant for his own good._ She did not need to say anything, for Oberyn leaned away, satisfied as a cat with a bowl of milk. She smacked him lightly against his thigh in retaliation. 

Prince Oberyn’s…inclinations were not much of an issue to her. Most wives would have felt otherwise, she thought, and had been curious as to why it did not bother her. Perhaps because she shared them, she now wondered. After all, she had enjoyed Mallora’s kiss that one time, and the sight of the nursemaid’s body as well. She looks upon handsome Arthur under the guise of perusing the fruits laid out for her, and he winks at her. That form of attraction was simple, at least.

So engrossed in her thoughts is she that she nearly misses the entry of the knight, small of stature, who rides in with mismatched armor and a shield with a sigil she does not recognize. And as Crown Princess, there was no sigil she did not recognize. 

A mystery knight, then. A young boy, but with a powerful control over his horse.

After a closer look, Rhaegar amends her conclusion. It is not a boy at all. This was a girl, the loosening of her plate at her chest the clearest giveaway. If Rhaegar did not have her own experience with armor, she would not have thought to make note of that, but she did. She was likely one of the few who would.

Sers Blount, Frey, and Haigh all fell to the Mystery Knight, and the crowds went wild. They screamed and stomped their feet, yelling wagers to one another that climbed so high they would surely never be paid. The air was intoxicating all around, which was one of the great joys of a Mystery Knight. The last Mystery Knight Rhaegar had seen had been Simon Toyne himself, who had planned on winning the joust before crowning and killing Rhaegar in one blow. Arthur had beaten him before the final tilt, but he had attempted to rush her nonetheless. 

The memory was a violent one. The warm blood of the would-be assassin had splattered over Rhaegar when Barristan had killed him, and although they were not speaking at the time, Arthur sat vigil in her chambers for hours afterwards, silently polishing the blackened blood from his blade. Barristan had stabbed the man through the heart mere moments before Arthur had split his head from his shoulders, wielding Dawn one-handed.

Aerys himself is on the edge of his seat, spit flying from his mouth as he congratulates the knight.

“You have our leave to participate in the joust on the next day,” Aerys has both glee and danger in his voice, “on the condition that you show your face to us first. A Mystery Knight once sought my daughter’s life, knight, and so you may not proceed without removing your helm.”

A caring father might have said the same thing, Rhaegar reflects, although Aerys is not one. Fear struck her heart, for if this woman took her helm off, Aerys might be insulted to see a member of the fairer sex. His will could not be predicted these days.

“I seek no leave, nor reward from you, my King,” the knight booms, voice warped by the metal. She then points her unbroken lance at the three Lords she defeated, “it is enough that you teach your squires honor!” She rides off the field, horse as quick as lightning, leaving the onlookers silent in their shock.

Aerys breaks the stunned quiet. “Bring me his head!” he screams, and the noise starts up again. Rhaegar exchanges glances with Barristan and Arthur, who seem to come to a conclusion between them.

“My King,” Barristan treats, “allow Ser Dayne and I to seek out the mystery knight on your behalf. We will bring him to you intact, that you might deliver your justice.”

Aerys strokes his beard, eyes still dancing in delight. “Yes, you have my permission. Go on, then. Barristan the Bold. Sword of Morning. The greatest knights of the realm. We shall see, won’t we, if you can complete even such a simple task as this.”

They return barely before nightfall, no lad in tow, only a shield and a few pieces of armor. 

“He was a boy of the smallfolk,” Arthur reasons, “seeking some glory. It frightened him to be unmasked, I believe, Your Grace. Nonetheless, he slipped away, his knowledge of the area much more advanced than ours.”

Aerys raged and smashed his hands against the table, teeth grit, face ruddy. Rhaegar and Rhaella sat perfectly still, until he had spent himself and collapsed into bed, dreamwine flowing through him like water.

“It was _not_ a boy of the smallfolk,” Arthur hisses, clearly upset, when it is just him, her, and Oberyn. Oberyn and Arthur largely avoided each other, but this was not an ordinary circumstance. “It was Lyanna fucking Stark.”

“Was it, now,” Oberyn drawls, intrigued, voice dripping in the tone of fascination and intrigue.

“Lyanna Stark, indeed,” Rhaegar muses.  
.  
.  
.

“Lady Lyanna,” Rhaegar greets, and the girl in the intricate blue gown stands rigid, her pride an armor of sorts. “Please, sit,” she cajoles, flashing her most charming smile. Lyanna Stark does as she is bid, stiffly sitting next to Lady Ashara, their little group completed by Princess Elia to Rhaegar’s side.

“It was good of you to join us. I feared you would not accept our invitation for tea, as I heard you were not feeling well the past few days,” Rhaegar says politely, motioning for another cup of tea and a plate of refreshments to be prepared for the newest arrival to their tea. When the refreshments were set, Rhaegar spoke to her serving girls again.

“Actually, set two more places. And then leave us.”

The girl narrows her eyes, looking directly at Rhaegar, who coolly sips her tea. It was a special brew, sent for during her first pregnancy by Oberyn, who knew a maester who specialized in caring for pregnant women. She never went anywhere without it, lately.

“My Lady Stark, I’m sure you have heard of my husband, Prince Oberyn Martell,” Rhaegar introduces him when the man walks into the sunlight-soaked sitting room. “And you certainly have made the acquaintance of my personal guard, Ser Arthur Dayne.”

Both Oberyn and Arthur incline their heads in greeting, and the former sits, the latter standing behind Rhaegar in his armor polished to an impressive shine. 

“It is such a pleasure,” Oberyn speaks teasingly, leaving a kiss on Lyanna’s knuckles. Lyanna withdraws her hand with some disgust playing on her face, and Rhaegar laughs within herself. 

“Princess,” Lyanna starts, unsure, but then gains some confidence and pins Rhaegar with the steel of her own grey, grey eyes, “I see you have found me out. I suppose I should thank you for keeping my identity away from the King, at least, Ser Dayne.”

“Do not be upset with him,” Rhaegar interrupts the glare the girl was sending Arthur’s direction, “Ser Arthur has been with me many years. He keeps nothing from me, for when you are the Crown Princess, no piece of information is too small to be of importance. Do you understand that?”

“I do,” Lyanna replies, anger dissipating, the nervous maiden reappearing.

“Where did you learn to do such a thing?” Ashara asks kindly, for she was the sweetest of them all, “I have never met a woman who holds a lance before, my Lady.”

“My brother Brandon taught me,” she confesses, and Ashara’s eyes went down to her tea. _Poor girl,_ Rhaegar sympathizes, for the Dornish beauty’s heart had gone away from her in the past few days, right into the hands of the future Winter Lord, who was already promised to another. Arthur did not like it, but he had long ago promised that he would not meddle in his beloved sister’s love affairs, and so he remained quiet.

“Indeed, Lord Brandon is known to us,” Rhaegar replies, bringing the focus away from Lady Dayne. “He has better prowess with a sword than a lance, I must say. If I may be so bold, you are better than he is, Lady Lyanna. It is you who might teach him.” 

Barristan had unhorsed Brandon earlier in the day, along with two others, and Arthur had done the same. Like as not they would face off against each other yet again for the final tilt, as they had in Lannisport, in Highgarden, and in King’s Landing before. Rhaegar had two crowns already, one from each of them, and so she hoped to avoid another. It was beginning to appear suspicious to Aerys, who did not need a reason to doubt the loyalty of even his closest guards.

Nonetheless, the girl laughs, a beautiful, full-throated sound. Complimenting her martial skills loosens her considerably, evidently. Rhaegar wishes to make her laugh over and over, just to hear that innocence again.

“Do you practice any other weapons?” Oberyn inquires, managing to make the question sound as lascivious as possible. 

“Swords, at times,” Lyanna answers, departing from her previous delight to fix him with a hard glare, “I know all about where to stick the pointy end, and how to make it hurt.” Princess Elia giggles at the implied threat, a tinkling of gaiety appropriate for such a woman as her.

“That is quite funny, my Lady,” she laughs, and touches her brother’s arm as if to soothe his wounded ego. Oberyn places a hand on top of hers absentmindedly, so he was clearly not hurt.

“Let us dispense with the niceties, my Lady,” Rhaegar says in the tones of a sovereign, “and discuss what we are meant to discuss, shall we?”

“You do not care much for your betrothed, do you?” she asks, perhaps unnecessarily, and the girl makes her distaste visible on her face. “Yes, we thought as much. And who might blame you for your...reservations? Every woman you see here has had encounters with Cousin Robert at his bawdiest. It is much for a young woman such as yourself to handle.”

Rhaegar let everyone mull over that for a time, before continuing. “Tell me, dear Lady, when will your wedding ceremony commence?”

“In a year's time, Your Grace,” Lyanna answers, forlornly looking at her hands in her lap.

“So soon?” Princess Elia acts surprised. It was true that the Princess was two and twenty and unwed, but her shock was farcical. Certainly girls of six and ten were regularly served up to the marriage bed. Sometimes younger. Rhaegar had been nine and ten herself, but she was a unique case, naturally. 

Lyanna appreciates the comment, though. “I do not wish it,” she moons glumly, “but my Lord Father will not be swayed. He wishes our alliance to be made as soon as possible.” 

A panicked look crosses her face at the realization of what she had just uttered, but it was too late. _Alliance,_ was the word she had used. Rhaegar felt as if she was a dragon, and in her powerful jaw, Lady Lyanna was a mere sheep.

“You might be interested in how that can be delayed,” Rhaegar murmurs only loud enough for her companions to hear, as if it was a mere aside. She had wanted to drag it out, to make the final reveal as scrumptious as it had felt when she had first thought it, but Lady Lyanna looked up sharply - hopefully, even - and simply asked, “how?” Her tone indicated that she would do absolutely anything to delay her wedding, and Rhaegar won’t force her to wait.

“Come to Dragonstone,” Rhaegar suggests simply, “serve as a lady-in-waiting for me. I am not so demanding, and the royal favor would serve you well. Not to mention, I would keep you for several years at the least. Robert cannot wed you while you are part of mine own household.”

“Truly, Your Grace?” Lyanna questions, looking doubtful. “You hardly know me at all. Why would you ask for me?”

All of the tea party attendants looked around the circle, meeting each other’s eyes. It was critical that Lyanna believed there was a secret at play, Oberyn had said, for the girl clearly loves a challenge, and a puzzle was as good as any.

“If I might be frank, my Lady,” Arthur begins, and Lyanna’s eyes went wide with admiration when she looked upon the knight, “there are a great many dangers surrounding Her Grace. The Princess, and her children, are in a...unique position. To have one of Her Grace’s ladies familiar with the blade would be an additional layer of security. After your performance, I believe you would be well-suited to such a task.”

“You would be like Jonquil Darke, the Scarlet Shadow of Good Queen Alyssanne,” Ashara adds sweetly, taking Lyanna’s hand in her own.

“I was trained from a young age with weaponry myself,” Rhaegar spoke again, “but with carrying this babe, and my eldest daughter to consider,” she pauses for effect, “I believe that to bring you to King’s Landing, and then later to Dragonstone, to allow Ser Arthur leave to train you in the arts of battle, would provide me the greatest peace of mind.”

Oberyn wears a small smirk on his face, an indication that he believes the delicate seduction of Lyanna Stark to be a foregone success.

“You would train me?” Lyanna asks, the question directed at Arthur. He pretends to ponder it.

“I believe I would be best, as I am already familiar with what guarding the Princess entails, but if you do not wish it, then there are other knights of the Kingsguard. Prince Lewyn, or Ser Barristan I suppose. Neither are bad teachers, my Lady,” he offers, but she shakes her head vehemently.

“No, Ser Arthur, I would be honored to learn from you. Forgive me, Your Graces, I am at a loss for words. I am not sure what to say.”

“That is fine,” Rhaegar employs some patience in her voice, “undoubtedly you must think on it for a time, and consult your brothers. I know we ask much of you, but I hope you understand that these are strange times, and that your stay at my side would be complete with every comfort available. I pray you join me, my Lady. I believe we might be great friends.”

“I am honored that you say so, Your Grace,” Lady Lyanna still turns her head about in wonder, smiling shyly. _She will certainly say yes,_ Rhaegar thinks to herself, and hides her look of triumph in her cup of tea. 

She dismisses the Lady with the excuse that she must rest for the babe’s health, thanking her for her time, and offering one last plea. When she is gone, Rhaegar leans back, and her Dornish companions do the same.

“Why is she so important?” Princess Elia wonders gently. “For she must be, if you employed all of us at once.”

“She is the key,” Rhaegar distantly responds, “now, we have a connection to the Stormlands through betrothal, the North through blood, and Houses Tully and Arryn through her brothers. We will build more leverage, I am sure, but Lady Lyanna...she will be the honey to sweeten each deal. She will make them all stick.”

“You are wise, Princess,” Ashara compliments her, and Rhaegar kisses her upon her cheek.

“Fair lady,” she promises, for Ashara’s loyalty was a precious gift, “if it is your and Lord Brandon’s wish, mayhaps he might join my Court, as a Master of Laws or some such, and you as my lady. Simply say the word.”

Ashara blushes beautifully, and turns to speak to Arthur, who takes a seat beside her and swallows a strawberry tart whole.

“The Lady Lyanna seemed quite taken with you,” Ashara teased, and he rolled his eyes.

“It is the armor and the sword that the girl desires,” he counters, and swats his sister’s hand which had come to pinch his cheek.

“I daresay she liked you as much as she disliked Oberyn,” Elia observes, and Rhaegar’s husband scowls.

“Yes, the maidens always enjoy looking upon Ser Arthur,” he parries venomously, “but, of course, Ser Arthur never seems to bed maidens. How unfortunate.”

Arthur’s answering glare was caustic.  
.  
.  
.

The final joust is a most predictable affair. Arthur and Barristan break a record amount of lances against each other. It is almost relegated to a swordfight, but the crowds insist on another tilt. In that, Arthur finds an opening that had somehow escaped him before, and unhorses Barristan cleanly.

Before that last run, Arthur had removed his helm for a moment, and touched at something around his neck. None but her knew what it was, but of course, it was her favor, that he carried with him always.

Arthur was awarded the laurel, a well-crafted ring of blue roses the likes of which Rhaegar had not seen before, not even in her own mother’s garden. Her heart sinks into her stomach. There had been so much going on, she had not even truly considered…

He had taken off his helm once more, and turned his eyes to Rhaegar, as she feared he would. _Do not give it to me_ , she screams in her mind, and even shakes her head slightly. For Aerys would use it as fodder, and her relationship with her husband was still recovering. She would wear a thousand crowns of flowers for Arthur in private, but here in the open she could not. Surely he saw that as well.

He mercifully did, and his face was blank when he rode past the royal box. Passing Ashara surprised her, but when he lay the laurel in Lyanna’s lap and proclaimed her the Queen of Love and Beauty, Rhaegar thought it fitting. The cheering was loud, albeit somewhat confused, and Arthur rode from the field.

“Why did he not crown you, girl,” Aerys demands, and Rhaegar did not have an answer. “He crowned you before, what has happened?” he says childishly, seeming upset. His favorite line of attack against Prince Oberyn was slipping from his grasp, Rhaegar realized, and that caused him distress. 

“I am a wife and a mother now,” she supplies, scrambling for her words, “perhaps he simply wished to crown a new maiden. Gods know we have had the same few Queens for the past few tourneys, myself amongst them.”

“Perhaps,” Aerys sneers, angry with rage, “but that changes nothing. You are the most comely of all these simpering bitches present. I will not have you insulted.”

“I am not insulted,” Rhaegar rushes to console her father, before he descends into some fit of madness and accuses Arthur of treason by means of flower crown, “in fact, I find the Lady Lyanna most deserving. I hope to bring her to King’s Landing, as one of my ladies, by your leave.”

Aerys grunts, granting her request without fanfare, and stands to make an announcement. “We will have a closing feast tonight. We thank you all for attending.” Then he left the field, accompanied my Lord Commander Hightower and Ser Willem Darry. It was a short speech, but better short than the vile, winding words he had taken to imparting lately.

At the closing feast, Arthur dances with Lyanna as a tribute to his victory, and Lyanna gives him her assent to accompanying them to King’s Landing, to pass onto Rhaegar. The sides of his mouth were crinkled as if he had been laughing during the entirety of the dance, which he had been. The girl had been excited as well, twirling with an energy of one intoxicated, although she had not touched a drop of drink, Rhaegar noted.

“Perhaps she has taken a liking to you, after all,” Rhaegar says, attempting for humor, but failing to mask her true feelings entirely.

“Perhaps,” Arthur replies, and bows before the door to her chambers in the castle. He was upset, for he had dearly wished to crown her, she sees that clearly enough now. It frustrated him to constantly toe this line of propriety after the complete freedom they had experienced in Summerhall. She wished to comfort him, to take him in her arms and strip him of his armor until he was nothing but a man, and she naught but a woman. He would address their babe, and she would sing a lullaby for the child as well, a new one that she had written just for him, just as she had written one for Rhaenys. 

But it was not possible to do that with so many eyes and ears about. Instead, she retreats into the room she shares with her husband, the one who was not Arthur, and banishes all thoughts of Arthur from her mind. The melancholy of pregnancy was upon her, and if she sought out her Princely husband’s arms and kiss, if she allowed him to supply her with tea and soothing words and comfort, then none could blame her. 

Oberyn treats her gently, reminiscent of their wedding, and if she allows his clever fingers between her thighs, if she allows her own hand into his breeches, then they were husband and wife after all. Neither of them had ever been any good at resisting pleasure.

“Did you wish to be crowned?” Oberyn asks her long after she thought he had fallen asleep, tone neutral as it always was when it was not overwhelmingly carnal, or raging angry.

“No,” she answers, “it would have been unwise.” But she did not know if that was the truth. _The Crown drives even sane men mad,_ she recalled her own words from so many nights prior, _and here I am, reaching for the Crown with both hands. May the Gods show me mercy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just to clarify: viserys isn't the heir because a) after the death of so many children, aerys is wary of naming an heir before they're the age of majority, and b) viserys is kept away from him by rhaella so he's also doing it to spite her in a way. however many, particularly the faith, see viserys as a perfectly viable male heir anyways. that's rhaegar's largest stumbling block in terms of deposing aerys, hence why she needs the Lords support to be specifically for her!


	5. Imprisoned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forbidden from leaving the Red Keep, Rhaegar's inner circle learns to rely on one another in the face of painful tribulations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just binged the new season of the crown and monarchy is bad. here i am writing about one anyway. wonder what mao's 'combat liberalism' has to say about this

Lady Lyanna acclimatised to King’s Landing in a strange way. She did not adopt any of the courtly ways of speaking, or acting, and certainly employed no deference beyond what was necessary. She could hardly be called a lady, although that was her title. But she was popular nonetheless, enjoying her riding and explorations of King’s Landing proper. Rhaegar’s favor had much to do with it, but the girl had a Northern charm all her own.

Rhaegar found her delightful. But she regretted bringing her to this pit of snakes with her whole heart. 

“Dragonstone? No, my girl, you will stay by my side. That is your place,” Aerys had snarled at her, when she broached retreat to her keep to deliver the babe.

“My King,” Rhaegar attempted, unconvincingly, “it has always been a good omen for Targaryen children to be birthed on the island where Aegon himself was born. I only wish the same for my son.”

“Fear not, daughter,” Aerys laughed, maniacal, “you will bring us a strong son sooner or later. Until then, you will not leave my sight.” She had wished to protest more, but Aerys had turned dark. “Do not make us doubt the trust placed in you, Rhaegar. You will not leave the Red Keep.”

And so Rhaegar settled into her confinement, the thick walls of the Keep her own prison bars. Oberyn kept chambers next to hers, Arthur in the White Sword Tower as always, and Lyanna in the Maidenvault. During the morning, however, they all came together for a common purpose.

“She improves,” Rhaegar notes distantly, penning a plea to the son of Lord Velaryon regarding the support he might expect from the Crown in the years to come, if he only remained faithful. The promises she made were nothing incredible, and indeed had been on her mind anyways - strengthening the royal power at sea would allow her to open additional trade with their Essosi neighbors, ending the relative dependence on the Reach to feed the people. Rhaenys bounced happily in her cradle placed next to Rhaegar, who was so large with child that she could no longer hold the girl on her lap. 

“She does,” Oberyn agrees, eyes tracing Arthur and Lyanna’s deadly dance. Two minutes passed before Lyanna was flat on her ass again, as she had been several times that day already. Oberyn picked up Rhaenys so that she could crawl about for a bit, making delighted sounds and urging the girl to come towards him, until she started to cry because a large rock frightened her, at which time Mallora took her away for her feeding. 

“That was a decent side swipe you employed,” Arthur praises Lyanna, wiping some sweat from his brown after pulling Lady Stark up from where she had landed, “but you lacked the balance needed to return to form quickly afterwards. That left you wide open.”

Lyanna pouts, but falls back into position, and they went at it again. She did not fall on her ass this round, but she did lose her sword, and Arthur called for a break after that. An hour had passed, and they sat to drink water.

“I will never be any good at all,” Lyanna complains, and they all chuckle knowingly.

“You will,” Arthur assures, placing a hand on Lyanna’s shoulder for comfort, which wiped the smile from Rhaegar’s face, “it takes time. Most opponents you face will not be me, either, and so your task will be easier.” He turns to Rhaegar for support, and removes his hand when he sees how her eyes have narrowed.

“Indeed,” Rhaegar supplies, “it took me two years before I beat Arthur in a spar even once.”

Arthur frowns, “and that was because you cheated, Princess.” She smirks at him, recalling how she had leaned in close as if to kiss onto his unexpecting mouth, brushed a hand over the front of his breeches, and promptly disarmed him.

“How did you do it?” Lyanna asks eagerly, none the wiser.

“Yes, how did you, wife?” Oberyn joins in, tone dryly indicating he very much knew how she had done it.

Rhaegar gazes upon the Lady indulgently for a moment, and then turns back to her letter. “All men have their weaknesses, darling Lyanna. Arthur less than most, but even he has one.”

“Yes, I do have the one,” Arthur assents, eyes burning into the side of Rhaegar’s face, “but you are the only one who has ever been able to exploit it, Princess.”

Rhaegar smiles despite herself.

“Perhaps you would be interested in a different weapon,” Oberyn suggests, from under the shade of his dark hair hanging as he leaned forward. “The spear. The morningstar. Those of the more...delicate variety. All of which I have experience with, my Lady.”

“Thank you, but I must decline,” Lyanna says with a sour face, “I would like to master the one weapon before I take up any others. Your Grace.” The courtesy is tacked on with little respect intended, but Oberyn takes it in stride. 

Rhaegar stands, and the rest did as well, courtly manners ingrained in them. She motions for Lyanna to redress in her gown. “There are things I will see to inside now. Lyanna will accompany me, you two may do as you please.” Arthur and Oberyn bow their heads respectfully, and Lyanna quickly arranges herself so as to be presentable to any they might pass.

“Princess,” Lyanna broaches hesitantly once they enter her rooms, where they would both change into more Courtly gowns in order to join the other ladies for tea in her mother’s garden. Rhaegar bid her go on. Clearly, there was something the dark haired maiden needed to get off her chest. She also motioned for her to begin undoing her laces, which Lyanna never complained about, and indeed, Rhaegar quite liked the feeling of Lyanna’s thin, nimble fingers on her bare skin.

“I wish to tell you that I have no desire for the Prince Oberyn, your husband,” she confesses, and Rhaegar has to stifle a chuckle.

“I know that, Lyanna,” Rhaegar assures her, “Oberyn is a merely terrible flirt. If it makes you uncomfortable, however, I will bid him stop.” Lyanna finishes the laces and her dress falls to her feet, leaving her in only smallclothes. She admires the bump of her own babe in the mirror. She was eight moons gone, and the babe was on the edge of descent. Lyanna touched where the babe kicked, as she often did, but with more hesitance than usual, as if she had more to say. 

“Fetch my shift,” Rhaegar orders with an encouraging turn of her lips. If Lyanna needed time to build up courage, then she would have it. When her shift of sapphire silk was donned, she sat on the edge of her bed, and patted the place next to her so that Lyanna would sit as well. Rhaegar took the wolf girl’s face in her hands, kissing her chastely upon her mouth, which Lyanna barely returns. Lya normally loves their kissing games, but today she is tense.

“There is nothing you need keep from me,” Rhaegar promises, and Lyanna nods.

“I understand, Princess,” Lyanna blushes, and her face says that she indeed did, but that she was struggling nonetheless.

“It is only that…” she trails off momentarily. “It is only that I have no desire for Ser Arthur either, is all.”

Rhaegar stiffens. “Ser Arthur is a man of the Kingsguard,” she warns, unable to resist delivering the reminder, “and he is sworn to take no woman.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Lyanna concedes, “but at Harrenhal - you see, I love to ride. And so I went riding one morning. And I saw you, on the Isle of Faces. I saw you two together, I mean.”

 _Of course she had._ That explained all of her strange reactions to seeing her and Arthur together at the tourney, Rhaegar thinks bitterly. She sinks backwards into her pillows. The infernal fucking pregnancy pillows had returned, naturally, and they surrounded her.

“Yes. Well. That was stupid of us, anyways. We are lucky it was only you who saw us,” was all the explanation Rhaegar gave.

Lyanna hums, and kicks off her boots before coming to sit by Rhaegar’s head, precariously balanced on a pile of three pillows. “If it was stupid, why did you do it?” she pries, with all the innocence of a girl of six and ten.

Rhaegar lets out a dry chuckle. “Because we missed each other, I suppose. We had been so long in King’s Landing, never having more than a moment together. So we ran away, in a sense.”

“Does Prince Oberyn know?” she inquires further, and Rhaegar nods. Lyanna’s mouth parts in surprise, and some admiration, even. Rhaegar’s head falls to Lyanna’s lean thigh, and the girl strokes her hair.

“If I may ask,” Lyanna begins, curiosity hungry in her tone, “how did this all come to be?”

“That is a sad, and a long story,” Rhaegar tells her, tired now. Perhaps she might sleep while Lyanna read her a book with her soft, soothing tones, and they could remain in this position for the afternoon. There was always the morrow to have tea with the Court’s ladies.

“I am not doing anything at present,” Lyanna jokes, smiling sweetly.

Rhaegar looks up, meeting the girl’s enchanting grey eyes with her own. Rhaegar has never told anyone this story, has kept it wrapped in seven hundred layers of secrecy and intrigue at all times.

At last, she could do so no longer. Lyanna cards her hands through her long silver tresses, and Rhaegar closes her eyes. She casts her mind back to the beginning, to the very first moment she had met Arthur, in Ser Willem Darry’s training yard, standing alongside Jon as a gaggle of Lewyn’s Dornish knights introduced themselves.

She closes her eyes, and she tells Lyanna everything.  
.  
.  
.

The week had seven days, and the Kingsguard seven members. With some adjustment, it worked so that each white cloak had a day of the week in which they could perform personal errands, free from any obligation of serving the royal family.

It just so happened that this was Arthur’s day, and he was likely spending it the way he always did: Sleeping. Patronizing the tavern that served fairly authentic Dornish fare. Perhaps going for a ride along the cliffs nearby, although Rhaegar doubts that option. The sky has been black since the morning.

Instead, Lyanna’s training was being overseen by Barristan, who enjoyed teaching younglings new things, and found Lyanna a most rapt student.

“She should be learning the art of knives,” Oberyn complains, “and what to dip them in before a fight. Balancing a few knives, she would be deadly. A name would have to be thought of for her - the Wolf Witch, or some such nonsense.”

Rhaegar sighs, looking up from her correspondences. “Well, perhaps in time she will regret learning the sword, and then you might tell her you told her so.”

Oberyn humphs, and goes quiet, tracing his fingers along a tome detailing medicinal herbs that had hallucinatory qualities. Rhaenys was fast asleep in her cradle beside him, shaded from the sun by a length of cloth strung up above her. Oberyn had been to visit a whore of his the night prior, a Myrish man as pretty as a girl to hear him tell it, Rhaegar knew from the mark on his neck. She did not mind - he had appetites that she could not whet, pregnant or otherwise, and he was honest with her about his comings and goings. So long as he did not do it out of malice, and practiced the utmost discretion, she found she did not care. There were larger concerns to spend her time on.

Many minutes passed before her husband spoke again.

“Lady Lyanna is hardly the only one with regrets,” he muses, his words pointed despite their casual delivery.

“Oh?” she asks, but does not pry. He would tell her if he wished, she knew. If she seemed too eager to uncover his meaning, that might discourage him from sharing. That was his way, she had learned.

“ _Oh,_ ” he replies, and sighs, before closing the tome. “If you will recall, Princess, when Aegon the Unworthy found his mistress Bethany Bracken abed with his own Kingsguard, he ordered the two killed in a most barbarous manner. The remaining Toyne brothers sought his life, and his noble brother Aemon died as a result. Queen Naerys wasted away from heartbreak, they said, and she had been a faithful Queen. For her sacrifice, Aegon told the world that her son was not his, granted his bastard Blackfyre as proof, and a civil war erupted within your House as a result. Do you think, Princess, that this Aegon regretted his actions?”

Rhaegar considers his words. “No, my Prince. I do not believe he regretted anything. He was not named Unworthy without cause, I fear, and it may have even pleased him to see that King Daeron’s reign was challenged by the bastard who was more of a warrior than his trueborn son ever was.”

“Daemon had more of the Conqueror in him than Daeron did, that is true,” Oberyn agrees.

“The Conqueror had his time, but Westeros did not need another conqueror in that era. Daeron married Dorne to the Throne, when Aegon and his sisters failed to take it with fire. If Daemon had succeeded, we might still be at war, you at the head of one army, and myself at the other,” Rhaegar points out, and Oberyn concedes that much.

“That would be much different,” he remarks with a sly grin, and Rhaegar lets out a surprise huff.

“Yes, it would,” she replies, equally sarcastically. They had their differences, her and her husband, but if she had met him in the field of battle rather than in the bedroom as they had, she thinks a respect would have formed between them nonetheless.

“What did you wish to say, about regrets?” she pushes, when the conversation comes to a lull. Oberyn heaves a great sigh, and leans forward to look her in the eyes.

“What I mean to say, wife, is that I have some to speak of.”

“As do I,” she whispers, but he shakes his head to end her speaking.

“What you said, many moons ago, that you had thought...thought that there might have been a good match made between you and I at first. I wished to tell you I had also thought that. Elia told me that your heart would be a difficult matter, but at the beginning, I believed I was up to the task. I enjoy intelligent and powerful women, you might say,” he grinned wickedly, making a flourishing gesture at his own body, clad smartly in deep reds and blacks and golds. 

Then he blew air through his mouth, indicating some frustration. “I have long been fascinated by the past. It has always captured me. Now, I find I am captured by my own past, and how I have brought myself here, to now.” He searched her face then, to see if she understood. She did not yet, but he went on. “What I mean to say, Princess, is that there are choices in our lives that we inevitably do not pride ourselves on. What marks us is our ability to look back, to learn. I have attempted to do so, and I believe I should offer some apology to you. For my actions. For my words. I was raised well and noble, but often my blood runs hotter than it should. That is no excuse, merely an explanation.”

Rhaegar rests backwards to offer her neck some relief from all it’s straining. After all that has passed, and with this common enemy they shared, her words come easy. “I do not believe myself innocent enough to forgive another. But I forgive you, nonetheless.”

That satisfies him. He smiles a smile of knowing, a dangerous thing. “Good. I will strive to be worthy of it. Would you like to know something, Princess?”

She very much did, and told him so.

“Once, when I was a boy of ten and six, I came to the Water Gardens from my fostering to visit with Elia. She kept with her as a lady dear sweet Ashara, and my uncle Prince Lewyn was also in Dorne then, with this infamous squire he employed at the time. The next Sword of Morning, they called him, and when I looked upon him, this squire I had not seen since we were children...Princess. I need not tell you that he was magnificent. Elia dearly wished to kiss him, but he was too much engrossed in his training that he noticed her little,” Oberyn moved closer, conspiratorially, so that he spoke into her ear alone, and she sat rapt upon his every word. “I returned to Sandstone, and I took a stablehand into my chambers for the first time. It was merely exploration, but the boy had dark hair and brown skin and eyes so blue they were purple in the light of dusk. So the inspiration of my exploration was not much of a mystery.” He moves away then, eyes shrewd and dancing. As if he was sharing a great lark with her.

Rhaegar could not believe what she had heard. “You mean to say…”

“I mean to say,” he interrupts, ever mindful of their audience, “that you and I have much and more in common. I have always thought so.”  
.  
.  
.

Rhaegar excuses herself to the library, a room of magnificent arches and some of the oldest written works to have survived The Doom. She oft visits the cavernous room for solace, and leaves her Kingsguard Oswell to stand at the doors rather than entering alongside her. This was a normal request from her, so he thinks nothing of it, luckily. From there, she found her way through the secret tunnels that Maegor had created, the cloak of her hood pulled up. There were few about, the storm in the sky restricting the various courtiers to the inside, and she did not pass a soul on her way to her destination. 

She had run through it in her mind, and believed the path to be clear. Ser Barristan was with Lyanna. Ser Oswell was standing guard for her, she noted with a hint of guilt. Ser Darry remained with Viserys in his lessons, Ser Jaime with Rhaella, and Prince Lewyn and Lord Gerold with Aerys. 

The White Sword Tower should be empty save for Arthur. When she makes her way into it, climbing to his chambers with a hand on the wall for balance, she is relieved to find that is the case. Arthur sleeps as he always has; stretched out on his back in naught but his smallclothes, with a blanket up to his shins and no higher. The incredible sight of Arthur Dayne utterly relaxed and dreaming banishes all of Rhaegar’s troubles far away, and she drops her cloak and outer dress without further ado, climbing into his warm bed as the rain continues punishing the white stone walls outside.

There was no point in pretense. She craved him too much for it.

“Rhaegar?” he mumbles, floating a single finger into the world of the living when the weight of a heavily pregnant woman curls into his outrageously long frame.

“Yes,” she whispers, turning so that he can instinctively pull her into the curve of his body, burying his face in her hair and inhaling a breath of her. 

“I’ve missed you, Princess,” he breathes into her hair, and she senses that he is only half aware of his words. He got so little rest as it was, she had nearly felt bad when she came in, to disturb him in such a rare moment of repose. But Rhaegar needed to be close to him more than anything. The conversation with Lyanna, and the ensuing one with Oberyn, had exhausted her, and she merely wished to lie in Arthur’s arms for a while. For as long as she could.

“I love you, Arthur,” she speaks aloud into the room, letting all other words fall away. They never had to pretend when it was just the two of them, after all. He smiles in her hair, and his hand curls around the babe protruding from her before he succumbs to the siren call of sleep once more. 

Rhaegar lets her eyes droop and catnaps as well, waking only after some time has passed. She wasn’t sure how long precisely, but it could not have been long given that no aches or pains had developed in her body. That was the reason for the pillows, of course, to prevent the shallowest of sufferings. 

When she turns over, however, Arthur’s amethyst eyes are wide open and ocean deep, looking upon her with adoration written so clearly across his face that he may as well have been screaming it from atop the Iron Throne.

“I apologize, Princess, for sleeping through your arrival,” he says, frustrated, and his eyes told her that he meant it. Time together was sparse, and he never wished to miss a single blink.

“You needed the rest, my love,” she assures him gently, and leans up to kiss him. It was only a soft affair, the press of her full lips against the expanse of his perfect mouth, but when he returned it, languidly moving against her in a lover’s rhythm all their own, so clearly _savoring,_ she never wanted to stop. They did not detach, not for what felt like an eternity, Arthur rubbing circles with his strong hands into her back and shoulders, relieving the ever present tension. She traces the muscles of his arms up to his neck and face, wiping away a single tear that falls with a brush of her fingers. She lets her tongue run across his teeth, pleased by his shudder, and when he responds with a deepening of his own, she circles her arms around his neck entirely and lets the world disappear.

 _Would that it could always be this simple,_ she laments in her mind when their kisses came to an end, and he pet her hair that lay across his chest, his body warm and inviting for her alone. 

“Rhaegar,” he croons, almost regretfully, “I know it has been difficult lately. I wish I could do more for you, that we were on Dragonstone again, where the Spider’s eyes are not always abound.”

“How many eyes does Lord Bloodraven have,” Rhaegar murmurs, remembering an old saying, “a thousand, and one.”

“Varys is no Bloodraven, but he is dangerous nonetheless,” Arthur grumbles, before gripping the material of her shift in a fist, drawing it up her legs ever so slightly. “Did you come here for…?” he asks, seemingly shy despite all they had done.

“I am far too pregnant for bed sport,” Rhaegar smiles at him indulgently, and Arthur nods, appeased. “But there is something else we might do,” she suggests, and he arches an eyebrow. Rhaegar raises herself up, swinging her legs over the bed and kneeling on the divinely soft fur carpet that was one of Arthur’s only wordly indulgences. He had brought it with him from Starfall for use in their marriage chambers. She maneuvers him so that he sits on the edge of the bed frame, her intent to give him pleasure with her mouth. She was certainly out of practice, but he had enjoyed this immensely when they were youths, and his gratification had long been hers. Arthur slows her, cupping her face in his hand. 

“You don’t have to, Princess,” he disclaims, “I am more than satisfied to simply lay beside you. Do not strain yourself on my account.”

Rhaegar undoes the last of his clothing, her hand circling around the length of him that had laid hard against her since she opened her eyes from slumber. “I am pregnant, not ill. And I wish to,” is all she says, dismissing him, and then she takes him in, closing her eyes and occupying herself completely with his burning rigid flesh. He leans back on one hand, the other caressing her hair, cupping her breasts, whatever portion of her he could touch, and he moans her name when she hums around his cock.

“ _Rhaegar,_ ” he groans, guttural, willing his hips to stay still, although they jerk upwards nonetheless. She meets his eyes then, raising her watery gaze and licking from root to stem, pausing to lap at the very tip of him. 

“You are the only man I have ever done this for,” she confesses in the way lovers do, before returning to swallow him down once more. She brings up a hand to caress along his muscular thigh, and when she begins to take him as far as she is able, he does not last very long, as she knew he would not. The sight of the babe within her made him incredibly randy, she had found, and where before he had employed discipline and patience in all their intimate moments, he could no longer find within him such stamina. Making a child with her had affected him considerably, just as certain things affected her more deeply than others. Such as when Arthur used his strength to fuck her while standing, or when a lover let her wrap her hand around their neck. Arthur misliked that feeling, although he had tried his best to enjoy it for her sake, so it was only with Oberyn that she could do such an act. He was open to most things.

Although Rhaegar does not mind swallowing his seed, her throat has been sensitive as of late, so she spits the remains into a linen to be disposed of. Arthur helps her back on the bed, kissing her deeply as he lifts her and lays her with a pillow placed beneath her back for comfort.

“You were always good at that,” he smiles crookedly, satisfied and energized, pulling his smallclothes and breeches back on and coming to lie beside her.

She hummed, tracing a path down his chest, which was all she could do with her belly in front of her as it was. She could hardly even lie on her side any longer. The babe was not far at all, she thought, with great anticipation. “Has another woman ever done that for you?” she wonders aloud, curious.

“A few, yes,” he responds, rubbing her legs and then her arms with his warm hands. Earlier on, with Rhaenys still in her stomach, Pycelle had advised her that such massages were good for her blood circulation, and after Arthur learned of that fact, he took every opportunity he could to do so for her. He palms her breasts, holding them so that the weight of them blessedly left her shoulders.

“Even after you became a Kingsguard?” she ventures. They barely ever discussed what happened in the time they spent not speaking. It was a vile phase in both of their lives, and better left alone lest ill-feelings stir up.

“No,” he admits, “for I swore a vow.”

That was interesting, and she mulls it over a minute. “Do you not break those vows when we lie together?”

“That much is true, but you are the only exception. No man can be expected to resist a woman such as you, much less myself, who loves you,” he shrugs, bringing one of her hands to his mouth to kiss. She nudged a finger into the wicked, wet cavern of his mouth, one he accepts enticingly.

“I thought you were too pregnant for any lovemaking,” he japes somewhat seriously when she withdraws the digit.

“I am,” she sighs dramatically, “but I enjoy the knowledge that you would make love with me even when I am so.” He grins brilliantly, and parts his lips to respond.

The response never comes. It was Oswell who came, thundering into the room with his helm discarded. They had not heard him ascend the stairs, and so they were taken completely by surprise.

Arthur leaps up from where he sat, and before Rhaegar could even register how rapidly her heart beat, he had Oswell held against the wall, one arm lodged beneath his chin and the other held tight atop Oswell’s on the hilt of his sword, to ensure he did not draw it out.

“Get dressed, Princess,” Arthur growls without even looking at her, and Rhaegar could hear the mad panic in his otherwise tightly controlled voice, “I will handle this, but you must go.” Rhaegar got dressed quickly, but she did not leave.

“All of King’s Landing knows you love her, Dayne,” Oswell sneers, his breath shallow, “I am not here about this love affair. I am here for the Princess.” Rhaegar’s blood went cold. She put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and he lessened the pressure on Oswell’s throat by an increment. Oswell turns his face to Rhaegar.

“Princess Rhaegar, your father has summoned you…you, your mother, Prince Viserys, and Prince Oberyn. And all of your ladies as well.”

“On what matter,” she hears herself ask, her mind frozen.

Oswell hesitates, taking a quick glance at Arthur’s arm still constraining him against the wall. “He is delivering the King’s justice, Your Grace. There is a child...accused of stealing from the food carriages entering the Keep.”

“A child,” she repeats, uncomprehending. Or perhaps she only wished she did not comprehend. She had never been present before for such an abomination, a miscarriage of a king’s authority, but she had heard the stories. “Let him go, Arthur,” she commands, hardly higher than a whisper.

“Princess,” Arthur protests, but Oswell interrupts him. “I swear on my House and my honor that I am loyal to you, my Princess. I was not in Court at the time, but I know of the history between yourself and Ser Arthur. This changes nothing. I serve you.”

Oswell was loyal to her based on the bond they had built when a famine crossed King’s Landing. He had ridden with her to Highgarden thrice, to negotiate terms, and they had forged a friendship. His humor was as dark as the bat that symbolized his House, and she did not doubt his words for a moment. When she did not speak further, Arthur understood implicitly that her last order stood, and released his sworn brother.

“I will don my armor and come with you to attend your father,” Arthur tells her, voice demanding and final. His words were not final, however. She was his Princess.

“You will not,” she says calmly, and moves towards the door, “you are assigned rest today. Oswell will remain with me, or else we will raise suspicion.”

“Suspicion,” he implores her, “to all hells with suspicion! You are _not safe with him,_ Rhaegar. You _know_ that.”

“And Oswell will be with me,” she levels him with hard eyes, but relents when she sees the hurt cross his face, “you cannot always protect me, Arthur. We both know what is happening. I will have to beg my father for mercy, and if you and Prince Oberyn are both there, that may leave him feeling challenged. Please do not misunderstand me. For the good of this child, I need to do this without you.”

He bites his lip viciously to tame the raging in his chest, and acquiesces. “I will do as you command, Princess.”

“Thank you,” she breathes out gratefully, lacing her palm to his so that they might grasp each other’s fingers for a moment of strength, and sweeps from the room with Oswell.

She walks as quickly as a heavily pregnant woman could, which was admittedly not very. “I apologize for what occurred, Ser Oswell,” she apologizes quietly while she huffs her way to the throne room.

“None needed,” he replies immediately, and she could tell he wished to make a joke but there was no space for any humor to lighten the atmosphere, “if any deserve solace, Princess, it is you.” No additional words pass between them, and when the doors to the Iron Throne room were opened, Rhaegar could see that her entire family was present, excepting Rhaenys. That was no small relief, given Aerys’s cruelty.

Prince Oberyn wears a face of rage, but when he turned to her, all she saw was the hint of apprehension, of fear. Lady Lyanna had tear tracks falling freely down the smooth skin of her face.

The child was chained and bound, weeping for his mother on the floor. Rossart, that thrice-damned rat, held a jar in his hands. Wildfire, of course. Rhaegar could faint.

“Your Grace, my King and Father,” Rhaegar greets, curtsying as best she could. It was best if she followed every courtesy imaginable. Aerys liked it when she minded his rights upon her as her sovereign, and she usually found him at his most agreeable as a result.

“Daughter,” he cackles, cruelly. One of his sleeves was wet with blood, as it often was. _King Scab._ “Do you know why I called you?”

Ah, so he would taunt her first. Rhaegar squares her shoulders for strength. “I do not, Your Grace.”

He laughs, a thin, weasel-like sound that would have made her shudder if she did not hold herself so rigidly. “This miscreant,” he begins with perverse glee, “was found in the food carts. If my soldiers were not so diligent, he would have poisoned your food and ripped the heir from your belly. But not to fear. I will give him the justice...the fury of House Targaryen! I will give him fire and blood!"

Rossart starts his descent from the dais, wildfire at the ready, and Rhaegar forces herself to move forward, to act.

“Your Grace,” she calls softly, from the bottom of the Iron Throne, and Aerys looks upon with a crazed look in his eyes. It was anticipation, misplaced and disgusting, and when he looked upon her body, Rhaegar remembered what Barristan had told her. _He visits her afterwards, Your Grace. I believe the Queen...suffers, during these visits._ Barristan’s heart was too large, unfailingly vulnerable to the softness of women and children, and Rhaella was a childlike woman. 

Rhaegar pushes her cloak further back to expose the column of her thin throat. She clasps her hands as if she is praying, as if she is the Mother, and turns her eyes up to him as if he is a deity. “Your Grace, I have birthed one child and carry another. The sweetness of babes is precious to my soft heart, and I beg the Gods to never allow harm come to any child. If Rhaenys were to be ripped from my arms, it would be my dearest wish that she would be treated with kindness and mercy.” Not a sound could be heard throughout the room but her voice. She sank to her knees, pregnancy stomach be damned, and gazed upwards pleadingly. “Father, I beg of you. I cannot bear to see a child suffer. You are a just and fair King. If you leave the matter of this child to me, I will see out his punishment in your noble name, but I plead you - do not give him to these flames. It would destroy my heart to see this done. For my sake, Your Grace, let the boy live. For you are a most gracious sovereign.”

She sheds tears, and they are not false. Even Rossart is entranced by her, his brow furrowed although he cannot tear his gaze away. Rhaegar was named beautiful before she could fully understand the word. Even a child and a second pregnancy haven't taken that away from her, if the effect she still has on men is to be believed. Let her beauty sway this pitiful, weak man Aerys had become, she begs the Gods. Let her father love her enough to honor her pleading.

Aerys peers down at her for what felt like eternity. “Daughter,” he wheezes, “you are a precious sight. We are generous. You may see to the boy’s punishment yourself.” He flicked his fingers casually to dismiss her, as if he was commenting on the weather and not choosing between a child’s life or death, and Oberyn and Lyanna assist Rhaegar off the ground. She thanks and praises him profusely, leaving the hall with the whimpering thief escorted by ten Gold Cloaks.

The boy cries in Rhaegar’s arms for the better part of an hour, and Rhaegar holds this filthy street urchin close because there is nothing else she can do. “I will take him for a meal,” Oswell offers, and Rhaegar accepts. That Oswell will send him out of the city at the soonest opportunity goes unsaid.

“You did well, Princess,” Oberyn tells her when they are alone. His tone is grave, his normal demeanor failing him.

“Have I?” Rhaegar asks rhetorically, staring aimlessly from the balcony of her rooms.

“Yes, Rhaegar,” he insists, fire in his voice. “You have. That child…”

“That child was saved, yes,” she says dully, then meets his eyes. They’re as dead as hers, “but what of the next child? I cannot save them all.”

He shakes his head fiercely, a righteous gleam in his eyes. “Yes you _can_ , Rhaegar. And you _will_.” He looks deep into her eyes to see if she understands his darker meaning. She nods once, tightly, and he rests his hand on the babe to comfort her. She places hers atop his, grasping his shirt with the other, and sobs into his chest.

Ultimately, she is correct. Not even three days later, she is too late. There are but ashes and the echoes of screams left by the time she had made her way to the Throne Room. 

Oberyn and Lyanna take turns sleeping beside her, for which she is grateful, because in the depths of the night she cannot distinguish her nightmares from reality. She does not know if she is imagining her mother’s bloody cries for mercy, or if she can actually hear them, cascading through the hallways like an unstoppable tide.  
.  
.  
.

Lyanna should be here by now but she isn’t. Rhaegar worries, fiddling with her hands incessantly. These days, sleep does not come to her.

Arthur guards her door this night. Rhaegar calls him in under the pretense of requiring assistance, then holds him close to ease her shaking. She had watched three men be sentenced to burn today. Only at a private dinner had she been able to convince Aerys to send them to the Watch instead, but he was not happy, and she would have to let the next prisoner be burnt to build up goodwill again. It was driving her mad.

Before a word could pass between them, there is a knock on the door, one Rhaegar easily recognizes as Lyanna. _At last._

“Your Grace,” the girl greets upon entry, and inclines her head to Arthur, who begs his leave. Lyanna halts him with a hand on his breastplate, and sets her candle down on the table.

Now that there is more light, the red streaks down the Stark girl’s face are prominent. Her hair is wilder than usual, and she is in her clothes of the day rather than her nightdress or gown.

“Lady Lyanna?” Arthur questions, and the girl collapses completely, caught in Arthur’s arms before she can fall to the ground beneath her. There is not a moment for Rhaegar to feel jealousy, for Lyanna is savage in grief, clawing at her mane of thick hair and grasping at her own neck until she is damn near choking.

“My Lady,” Arthur is bewildered, and holds the girl's arms behind her back as Rhaegar approaches her. Lyanna wrenches herself free, stumbling into Rhaegar’s embrace, and Rhaegar makes sures to hold as tight as she can.

It’s ages before she calms down enough to speak. Even then, she struggles.

“My father,” she gulps another sob down, “and Brandon, my big brother Brandon. Oh _Brandon._ ” It takes more time to stop her hyperventilating, and only when Arthur plies her with watered down dreamwine, it’s calming properties well-known, does she settle.

“There was a battle. With the wildlings, from beyond the Wall. There was trouble at the same time, near the Barrowlands, from the Iron reavers.” Even without saying more, Rhaegar knows where this is going. Her heart sinks for Lyanna, for her beloved tempestuous storm made flesh, now permanently marred by loss. Her girlhood has ended tonight.

“They’re both dead,” she finishes flatly, voice hardly discernible. “Ned is the new Lord of Winterfell.”

“My Lady,” Arthur begins, never the best at consoling women. Rhaegar brings her even closer and they sit in silence for some time. Lyanna’s cries have come down to sniffles, but they are no less heart wrenching.

In the morning, Arthur’s guard finishes, and Oberyn enters to break fast together with an ashen face. The bells toll for the Warden of the North while Lyanna remains abed, soothing words having had no effect on her at all. She does not push Rhaegar away, nor Oberyn, whom Rhaegar suspects she has come to care for in her own way.

Days pass. Rhaegar stops one burning, but fails to stop another. She writes to Winterfell with pages of condolences and news of Lyanna’s condition, which she signs herself with no attempts made to have Aerys approve of them. 

He had laughed when he heard the news. The wolves are defanged, he’d bellowed. In a way, it was a blessing that Lyanna would not be roused.

Until one day, she is. She stands in Rhaegar’s chambers, clad in the subtle pieces of armor that had been crafted for her and a single layer of skirt over her breeches, the sword she’d cheekily nicknamed Rose hanging at her side.

“Your Grace, I will ride for Winterfell,” she pronounces, and Rhaegar assents. She expected this. “I will return after I have paid my respects and am assured of my household’s comfort.”

“You need not, Lady Lyanna.”

“I will,” she grits, as sharp as the thorns of a rose. “And I will bring with me assurances.”

“Assurances?” 

“Yes, assurances.” Lyanna fixes her with a gaze of iron. Her eyes remain red-rimmed, but they are fully her own once more, rather than drowning in memories as they had been even after Lyanna refused dreamwine. “I am not stupid, Princess. I understand much and more. The North is loyal to the rightful sovereign.” 

She takes a step forward then, and bends down onto one knee. Rhaegar allows her to grasp her hand and brush her lips against her knuckle rings, as a thousand men have done in her lifetime. Never before a woman.

“ _I_ am loyal,” Lyanna Stark swears. _To you_ goes unsaid. Rhaegar’s throat is tight in the face of the torrent Lyanna is unleashing upon her. “For all of my life, Princess. You are my liege and my place is by your side.”

“It is,” Rhaegar grants her, running a tender finger along her smooth face, the puffiness of saltwater tracks remaining. Lyanna would never be Lady Baratheon, that much would stand. With Dorne, the North, the Velaryon fleet, the Reach, and an immovable Vale, there was no need to preserve that betrothal. “We await your return.”

Lyanna stands then, and nods tightly. Daring as ever, she presses a kiss to Rhaegar’s mouth, a caress that Rhaegar allows to linger. Lyanna needs strength from her, she knows, and so she offers all she has to give until they part, Lyanna sighing and Rhaegar’s hands dropping back to her sides from where they rested on the steel of her breastplate. 

With that final farewell, she is gone.  
.  
.  
.

Lyanna’s letter to inform of her safe arrival comes a few weeks later, and Rhaegar’s water breaks that same day while she is returning to her chambers from a visit with Rhaella. Her stalwart shield is with her, and he barks orders to fetch this maester and that midwife and a hundred small comforts while he himself undoes her laces, placing her upon her bed in her soiled nightgown. 

“Forgive me, the maid will undress you,” he murmurs apologetically, leaving a kiss on her forehead and touching her stomach one last time. She rubs his jaw for good luck, mostly to ease his worry.

“You will meet your son soon,” she promises, and then a small army of persons invade her room, performing an unbelievable number of tasks all for the sake of this one tiny babe. The long awaited Prince, in whose name much horror had been brought about. Her and Arthur’s son. In the chaos, he has disappeared, and Prince Oberyn enters to wish her well. Rhaegar is unsure how he truly feels about the babe now that he is soon to come, but Rhaenys is babbling words from Oberyn’s arms, and Rhaegar kisses her little girl.

“I will remain in the antechamber,” Oberyn announces, and Rhaegar smiles at him gratefully. 

“You are a good man,” she tells him, surprisingly emotional, and the swift nod he makes in her direction informs her that he has made up his mind about this child. Partly as a penance, she knows, but partly because he is, truly, a good man. 

Anticlimactically, the boy’s arrival is as swift as Rhaenys’ was long. A mere four hours pass between coming to her bed and the child fully born, although Rhaegar feels as if she has been thrown off a cliff only to crash onto the soft sand of the beach below by the time it is over. They take the babe, whose hearty cries are a good omen.

“You bled much,” the maester tells her seriously, although he does not seem particularly concerned. “It is critical that you rest for a time. Perhaps a moon or two. Otherwise damage could be done to the uterus.”

Rhaegar thanks him, and Oberyn takes a place at her side when she feeds the child for the first time, just as she had done for Rhaenys.

“Will you write a song for him?” he asks, as he holds the new child, Rhaenys cuddling to her mother and Rhaegar singing her the lullaby composed so long ago. Rhaegar notes that he is not half as awestruck by this one as he was by Rhaenys. 

He will be a nephew of sorts to Prince Oberyn, Rhaegar supposes. In the best scenario.

“He already has one,” Rhaegar answers, exhausted. “His is the song of ice and fire.” 

She falls to slumber then, and sleeps for two days, as she is informed upon waking. The maester is a bit more concerned now.

“The bleeding is marginally excessive to what we should expect. I have a tonic I will brew for you, to try and thicken the blood. You should not feed the boy yourself. Let your milk dry sooner than later.” Rhaegar pouts, but allows her boy to be taken to the nurse. Alia, this one was named, a meek woman of eight and twenty whose milk flowed abundant, although none of her children ever lived. It was supposed to be an honor, a woman who had never been drunk from before, but her silent presence made Rhaegar shiver.

It is an entire week before Arthur can create an excuse to enter, and Rhaegar dismisses her maid on some fool’s errand for privacy. 

“Aegon,” she speaks the name aloud for the first time. She wanted to share this moment with him and him alone.

“What better name for a King,” he agrees, captivated with the squirming bundle in his arms. Aegon gurgles, and Arthur holds him close to sniff the fine hair atop his head and kiss his brow. Arthur’s smile is so pure, his joy always held close.

“May I have a kiss as well?” Rhaegar teases, a sudden lightheartedness upon her, and Arthur does as he is bid, pillowing his mouth against hers. She rests her head on his shoulder and hums, placing a finger against Aegon’s grasping hand. He is already a strong babe. His eyes are purple, but more like Arthur’s than hers, she believes.

“Your eyes, and lips, and love for a woman’s bosom,” she tells him, still deliriously happy, dangerously uncaring of their surroundings. 

“It is not often you wear the cloak of joy,” he muses, burying his nose in her hair. 

“Neither do you.”

“No,” he concedes, wrapping an arm around her and holding her close to his body, Aegon swathed between them. “Only with you. Only with each other.”

Words become useless then, and he removes himself when the nursemaid knocks, squeezing Rhaegar’s hand on his way. She flashes him a brilliant smile, one he returns with a furtive grin of his own. 

His eyes were shining, she reflects, as she succumbs to the exhaustion that claims her often these past few days. The fantastic Ser Arthur Dayne, reduced to tears over a child the length of her forearm. He is ever her darling. 

In the Throne Room below, a pair of wretched tavern brawlers burn, begging for mercy, for the intervention of Princess Rhaegar, for salvation. Their crimes are named treason because in the pub were a few soldiers, and Aerys condemned them for attempted assassination of the Crown's servants. The soldiers in question gaze upon one another uneasily, and the hall watches the doors remain firmly closed. Princess Rhaegar remains in her childbed, they whisper. Without her, we are lost, they grumble. Above them, her slumber is dreamless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (inshallah) i will finish my other story and then wrap this one up before the end of the year, but who knows!


	6. The Iron Throne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best laid plans erupt the most explosively. Two letters fall into Aerys's hands, and change the course of history.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lost all motivation to write for a while after some messy life stuff but i'm determined to finish this if it kills me. very low likelihood but you never know

“A perfect heir,” Rhaella compliments weakly, eyes just that much unfocused. Her high collar revealed more than it hid. 

“Oh Muna,” Rhaegar trembles, and passes Aegon to the maid. Her boy was three weeks old, and she was finally approved to stand up from her bed long enough to bring the babe to meet the Queen. “Muna, I am so sorry. I am _so sorry._ ” Rhaella appears woozy even simply sitting there.

“Rhaegar, my love,” she croons, and opens her arms. Rhaegar seizes her and kisses her cheeks, soothing her as she might do Rhaenys. “You have done so well, sweet child. You are the light of my life. The light of the Realm.”

The swell of Rhaella’s womb is slight, but pressed together as they are, the promise of a babe is all Rhaegar can feel. Her heart rages against the walls of her chest, rebelling against the cage of her ribs.

“I will deliver you, Muna,” she swears, but Rhaella has gone away in her head. It is only when Viserys is brought in, bounding into Rhaegar’s lap and speaking excitedly that she comes back alive again.

“We learned about Daeron today!”

“Which one, valonqar?” Rhaegar inquires, when their mother remains silent.

“The Young Dragon,” Viserys exclaims, puffing out his chest, “he was a dragon and so am I, big sister!”

“Yes you are, my love,” Rhaegar coos and kisses his forehead. He beams and pouts when Rhaegar rises to depart.

She leaves Queen Rhaella’s chambers and nods to Ser Oswell, who comes to her side as they walk briskly. “The Council meets today, do they not?” she inquires, and he nods. “On the third hour, Princess. Lord Hand Merryweather takes your father’s petitioners in the Hall now.”

“Yes, of course he does,” she muses, halting in an archway that splits two ways. “Accompany me to the Great Hall so that I might replace Lord Merryweather, good Ser. Then slip away and inform my husband Prince Oberyn that his presence is requested at today’s Council meeting.”

A great cheer erupts when Princess Rhaegar enters, and she is magnanimous in her greetings, kissing children and touching the hands of the smallfolk of King’s Landing. Lord Merryweather bows away easily, nervous eyes twitching as they always do, and Rhaegar takes a seat halfway up the Iron Throne as was appropriate for a Princess of Dragonstone. 

By the time she goes to the Council meeting, her back is aching and her feet feel swollen. It is the natural effect of so long kept abed, not to mention she had barely any appetite since the birth. Nonetheless, she pushes forward.

“Princess Rhaegar,” all rise as one to greet her when she enters, and she gestures them sit. Prince Oberyn is already present at the head of the table, on the second seat that has accompanied the sovereign’s place since Good Queen Alysanne made a place for herself at Jaehaerys’s side. He gives her a wry, questioning look when she is seated beside him - they have seen nearly nothing of each other these past few weeks.

“Your Grace,” Lord Merryweather begins, “we are honored by your presence, but we are simply going over trivial matters. You are mere days beyond the childbed, so you need not join us.”

“And yet, we are already here,” Oberyn drawls mockingly. Lord Merryweather fiddles with his pin in the shape of a hand and a sweat breaks out on his forehead.

“If Her Grace has any concerns,” Pycelle the weasel adds, “she may send them to us in a note and we will do our due diligence to address it, I am sure all my Lords agree. The Princess's time is valuable, particularly to her children.”

“Yes, thank you, good Maester,” Rhaegar interrupts when Oberyn leans forward on his elbows. _So this is what our rule will look like. Old men speaking over us._ “But as the Princess of Dragonstone, when my father cannot be present I will make myself available in order to speak with his voice. And I say that any matter relevant to the Council is important enough for myself and my husband to hear of. Now, where shall we begin?”

Merryweather was correct that the materials were all trivial, but Rhaegar needs to hear them. Now was the time to show her competency in earnest, to be seen by the people and the Lords as never before. Golden dragons must flow in the hands of merchants, orphanages, and noblemen alike, for Aegon’s first nameday was where she would strike to depose Aerys. A Great Council would be called, and if the Gods blessed her plans she would be named Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

The time for waiting was past.

“My Lords,” she stopped them just before the meeting was dismissed. “For the next meeting, have a list of topics delivered to me a day or two earlier. I would like to to familiarize myself with the goings on of the Realm, so that none of our limited time needs be spent explaining. You have my leave.”

“Will we attend each of these?” Oberyn asks, or rather, complains. 

“Most of. You or I or both. We must be seen as involved governors, such is our duty as heirs.”

“Our duty as heirs,” he repeats, rolling the words over in his mouth. His eyes were shrewd, as if he knew that she was courting him just as she courted all the others. _I am, husband_ she thinks to herself, _for no matter your words I know in your heart lie reservations._ Rhaenys and Aegon would be publicly betrothed quickly, perhaps on the boy’s seventh birthday as a nod to the Faith; Oberyn’s daughters could be brought to Court around then as well. It was the responsibility of a wife to keep a husband happy, was it not?

When he gives her his hand and returns her to her chambers, they almost feel like a normal man and wife.

When he argues with the maester who was wroth that Rhaegar had left the confines of her featherbed, instead of fleeing at the mention of her ongoing blood, she is reminded that Prince Oberyn is nothing like a normal husband.  
.  
.  
.

“A missive from Winterfell, for Princess Rhaegar,” the old man who tended to the ravens bows his head and hands it to her. She nods her thanks, returning her attention to her family seated around the luncheon spread.

It was rarer and rarer these days, but the royal family did dine together with some regularity. As a child, seldom did Rhaegar go two days without sharing a meal with her parents. The enmity between Rhaella and Aerys had grown to such a degree that this amount was decreased to once every week, with Viserys being the darling of the proceedings. He yapped like only a child could, and Rhaegar always did her best to make up for some of the attention he did not receive from their father.

“What does it say?” Aerys demands, as his taster swallows down a sampling of their fourth course. Rhaegar declines the baked ham and opens the wax seal, skimming the contents. 

“Tidings from my Lady, Lyanna Stark, who returned home to grieve with her remaining siblings. She says all is well and she wishes to return to King’s Landing to attend us once more soon. A sweet soul Lady Stark is.” _Sweet_ is an unworthy word to describe Lyanna, _unyielding_ would serve better, but Aerys merely shrugs and tastes his soup.

“And a letter penned urgent for Ser Arthur,” the man bows once more, and a glance of bewilderment crosses Arthur’s face from where he stands unmoving, so unaccustomed is he to being addressed in such a setting.

“My thanks, maester,” he murmurs, tucking the letter into his shirt within his breastplate, “my apologies, Your Graces, for interrupting your meal.” Viserys gnaws his ham at Rhaella’s side and she cuts up his pie, neither of them bothering to respond. Rhaegar waves his apology off, and turns to Oberyn to tell him of how their daughter improves in her walking, having taken her first step several moons prior—neither of their children are present, Rhaenys sleeping and nearly five moon old Aegon still at the breast of his wetnurse.

“What does it say,” Aerys’s voice rings out, silencing them all. They all look to him curiously, but his eyes are on Arthur.

“Your Grace?” Arthur questions, when he sees he is the one being addressed. His helmet is raised for his face to be seen, for it is an unseasonably warm day and armor heats quickly.

“Yes, Dayne,” Aerys spits, “what does your letter say?”

“I...I correspond with my Lord brother and Lady sister in Dorne. The contents are rarely of any import, Your Grace.” 

Ever since Harrenhal, Rhaegar’s sire had lessened his taunting of her Princely husband. Most unfortunately, it was refocused on his Kingsguard, particularly Ser Jaime. Arthur was another favoured subject of humiliation, and it sent Rhaegar’s blood to boil.

“We are not simpletons that you must explain letters to us, Ser Dayne. Read the letter. Or do they contain traitorous words, true to your Dornish nature?”

“Father,” Rhaegar attempts to mediate the situation, “Ser Arthur’s family is most close to one another, after the untimely passing of their beloved parents. Surely they are allowed some pri—”

“Shut your mouth, girl!” Aerys screams, roughly throwing his wine glass from the table. Viserys shrieks, and Rhaella quickly moves to soothe him. “Read the fucking letter Ser Arthur, and if it contains news of treachery from my daughter I will know the source of her protests. You have always been so unbearably fond of one another, haven’t you?”

Arthur reluctantly retrieves the letter, removing his gloves to break the seal. Ser Barristan stands in the room behind Aerys, and he appears tense as well, which Rhaegar thinks odd.

“Dear brother,” Arthur begins, reading slowly and scanning the page to absorb the words before he says them out loud. “We hope you hale. Would that I could write you with more joyous news, but great grief and pain resides in Starfall…” he trails off, brow furrowing and eyes widening, his nose flaring in a manner that has Rhaegar and Oberyn meeting each other with concern.

“Has your tongue tied? The Kingsguard are better with swords than letters, but surely you can read,” Aerys sneers.

“Your Grace, there is a matter of some sensitivity being relayed to me, that I would not repeat in the presence of the Queen or Princess,” Arthur explains, voice tight. Aerys is in no mood to be reasoned with any longer, and with great hesitancy Arthur continues on.

“...great grief and pain resides in Starfall ever since our sister Ashara returned from the great tourney of Harrenhal castle. She was abnormally reticent and sloth upon arrival, and at first I believed that it was simply a matter of her good heart. Our sister loves freely, a great virtue of hers, so I did not inquire further. I curse myself for my inaction. Several moons later, she became sick with regularity, and I fear I must inform you that our sister has fallen with child. She would not tell me the name of the father, despite my promises that he would come to no harm - I merely wished to know if he was free to marry her, but when I requested such information, she succumbed to more misery. She begged me not to write to you, for reasons I must assume are embarrassment. I reassured her that your love for her is as great as the sky, but she would not hear it, and became inconsolable. I must break this promise now, for the situation has become dire. Only when news arrived of the premature deaths of Lord Stark and his heir did it become known to me that the late Brandon Stark was our sister’s lover, for she became unsound and despondent. I fear for our sister’s health, brother, and indeed her life, as she wastes away each day. The child is due soon, and I entreat you to request leave to visit that perhaps your presence may give our sister strength that she lacks. Our family has had much loss of late. Now more than ever, we must be as one. With love, your brother Alric.”

By the end of reading, Arthur’s voice is hardly higher than a whisper, and a great weight settles onto his shoulders. 

A crash sounds from behind Aerys. A flagon of wine was spilled, and Ser Barristan apologizes for his clumsiness when the royal family looks upon him queerly. He seems distressed, although not half as much as Arthur.

“Ser Arthur,” Rhaegar wishes to offer some words of consolation, but Aerys ends her words prematurely once again.

“Ask us, Ser.”

“Your Grace?” Arthur’s face is utterly pale, but he retains his respects when he speaks.

“Ask us for leave to visit your home, Ser. Did we not hear the same words just now? Ask us.”

If possible, Arthur’s face drains of even more color. His eyes sit on Rhaegar uncomfortably, and even when she nods to give her assent their panic does not decrease. He looks at her as if he knows something she does not.

Finally, he speaks wearily. “Your Grace,” he turns his eyes to Aerys and bends to one knee, “if it please you to grant me leave to visit Starfall and see my sister the lady Ashara well? I will return at my soonest opportunity, not longer than several moons from now.”

“You have it,” Aerys grants, swinging his arm in a falsely magnanimous gesture. “Begone soon, today or on the morrow. You are dismissed to make preparations.”

“Your Grace,” Arthur bows his head, rich uncertainty still clouding his features.  
.  
.  
.

Arthur leaves without any farewell. It stings but Rhaegar supposes there are more important tasks at hand. 

Such as dodging her maester who is increasingly losing his marbles. Lie abed for the entirety of her moonblood? She certainly would not. Instead she seeks out Rhaenys and takes her to the Sept, to light a candle that The Mother might make Lady Ashara’s childbirth easy. Arthur and Ashara seemed at times as one soul split between two bodies, so deep was their bond it always made Rhaegar wish she had a sibling near her age. All around her were such pairs: Prince Oberyn and Princess Elia, Ser Oswell and his brothers, Lyanna and hers, Cersei and Jaime Lannister—all except for Aerys and Rhaella. Her mother and father did not love each other well, nor had they ever in Rhaegar’s memory. 

She wonders what her own children will be like. If she is dooming them to misery like her parents were by betrothing them. But there was no choice, they had to, else Dorne would rise against her. It filled her with melancholy to dwell on, but it was the debt she owed her husband. It was a small price to pay.

 _Speak of the devil_ , she recalls a saying from her childhood lessons when she enters the Sept and two of the few Martells in King’s Landing were there already. With Rhaenys in her arms, that made all three.

“Prince Oberyn, Prince Lewyn,” she calls, and they turn as if surprised. She is curious to find lingering anger on their countenances, for her husband and his uncle were forever japing with one another.

“Princess,” they say as one, and Prince Lewyn bows. He takes his leave, and Rhaegar grants it.

She shifts Rhaenys to the ground and lets her stumble over to the man she calls Baba. It had been her first word.

“Husband,” she greets curiously, “did you and Prince Lewyn quarrel?”

He ignores her, which is unlike him, giving Rhaenys her kisses and then signaling for the nursemaid to take her away. Their good natured girl remains jolly. _There is something important to discuss_ she realizes, hackles rising.

“Wife,” Oberyn finally acknowledges when they are alone. Alone as one can be in the pit of snakes. “Come close.”

She did, and he seized her arms so they were sharing each other’s breaths. His eyes appeared exhausted and frenzied all at once.

“Tell me Princess, where does the loyalty of the Kingsguard lie?”

“The Kingsguard?” she repeats, not understanding.

“Yes. To whom are they loyal? Answer me quick, Princess, for surely you know.”

“I—one cannot know for certain another man’s heart,” she stutters.

“Hazard a guess,” he shakes her lightly, in no mood to show patience.

“Lord Gerold, Ser Barristan, and Ser Darry have known me since I was a girl. They see me as a daughter of sorts. They serve the King, however, so I could not say. Ser Oswell and Ser Arthur are mine own. Prince Lewyn...he is your uncle. Young Jaime, well, is Lannister blood known for its loyalty? He has been sullen since the farce of his swearing in at Harrenhal.”

Oberyn does not appear satisfied.

“What is this about?” 

He releases a frustrated groan. “Try to find the answer to my question, Princess. Sooner than later.” 

He leans against the altar of the Warrior, rubbing his face with his hand. She debates embracing him, but settles for placing soft hands on his shoulders to test his tolerance. He lets out a humourless laugh, but does not shy away from her touch.

“You know, I was sorry. I am sorry still, to hear of Lady Ashara’s plight. She is a woman with more love and kindness than Mother Rhoyne herself.”

Rhaegar holds back a frown. He speaks of her reverently, and Arthur had once told her that Ashara was a prospect for Oberyn. Arthur for her, Ashara for Oberyn; the glory the Daynes might have achieved.

“You courted her once, is it not?” Rhaegar cannot resist asking.

Oberyn shakes his head. “My mother, may she rest, always had her sights set North. It would have been an insult not to at least consider a few bannermen’s daughters and sons, but the Lady Ashara...if we married I would have broken her heart many times over. You are made of harder material, certainly.” He meets her eyes when he says this, but when she looks closely there is no wicked or mocking intent in them—only pain. “Ser Arthur came to me last night.”

The abrupt change in subject catches her off guard. “Oh?”

He grasps her hand that lies level with his heart, holding it firm. “Yes. He told me things, entreated me to others, and it was his request that I not burden you further but I will not let you go unawares. He said that on nights when he guarded your chambers, you would often have a visitor who he would have to entertain for hours. He said that when you lived on Dragonstone, your chambers in this Keep did not always lie empty, that there are portraits of you sitting the drawers of every desk our King sits. He said that not even the Kingsguard can be trusted, and that you are in peril but that you must not be dissuaded from your work.”

Rhaegar swallows to wet her dry throat. 

“Princess,” Oberyn jolts her to the moment.

“He told you this? Why did he not say a word to me?” 

She thought there were no secrets left between her and Arthur when they departed Summerhall last. But then, she had thought there were no secrets between up until the moment he donned the white cloak. It appeared she had been a fool twice now.

Could she rely on _no one_ in this entire steaming excuse for a city? She had given children to two men who betrayed her trust constantly, and they were both sworn to her side for the rest of her life, however long that might be. 

If she comes across as accusatory, it is not entirely accidental. Her world rests suffocating tight around her throat.

“His reasons are known better to you than I, Princess,” he mollifies her, “but does this change anything yet? I might share your chambers at nights, as a measure—”

“No,” Rhaegar nearly shouts, voice echoing around the Sept. “ _No._ I am sick to death of being lied to and protected. I am not some maiden, I am the Princess of fucking Dragonstone! How many times might you forget that?”

“Princess,” Oberyn’s brow knits. The sight angers her.

“What do you fear, Prince Oberyn? That if I succumb you will never be King, your daughter will never be Queen? I regret to inform you that there are no guarantees to be had,” she is fully sneering now, her face warped to match the turmoil within.

“Is that what you think? Is that what you think of me, still, after all this time?” he seethes.

“What else? At least be assured that I have written you into my death decree, that you will serve as Regent. So now there are no worries you need have, the risk is all mine, as you-”

He interrupts her, his nostrils flared, “shut your fucking _mouth_ , Rhaegar. You speak such unbelievable shit to me, woman. You believe I wish to rule alone, without you? That I wish to sit the Iron Throne for myself? _You presume much._ ”

“Do I? For we both know-“

"We both know what? We both know many things, don't we, Princess?" _The affair_ is what he means. And what of his affairs? They pre-dated hers, surely, and she at least loved Arthur, for all the good that did her.

" _You_ presume much! If you truly mean to be partners then end this-"

She never finishes that sentence. Because he pushes her against the altar and covers her mouth with his, effectively silencing her.

The heat from his mouth against hers is sublime in their shared rage, and she grips the material of his tunic, muffled groans spilling from her lips as she returns his fervor. When he pulls her tight against him she does the same with his shoulders, no sliver of space for even the air she desperately needs. She brushes aside the desperation of her lungs until she cannot any longer, but when he bites and harshly sucks at the column of her neck she cries out. It felt too good, the heat of his neck beneath her palms too tempting.

When he tugs at her skirts, the sharp pain in her abdomen stops her pleasure in her tracks.

“Wait, wait.”

“Why?” he rasps, roughly massaging her breasts, leaving heated kisses across her decolletage. She squirms against him, riding the sensation. How much life had passed since they properly fucked last? Long before Aegon, perhaps not since the beginning. She found she wanted it in a way she had not thought she could any longer, the heat in her belly building alarmingly fast.

“Oberyn, it hurts,” she whimpers, pushing him away slightly. His eyes were blown wide, the flush of desire fused onto his sharp cheeks. 

“I will be gentle,” he promises, not understanding and moving to kiss her again.

“No, my stomach, it hurts from the strain.”

He blinks twice, his mouth opening and closing. “The strain,” the clouds of lust in his eyes begin to clear.

“Yes, I—the maester wishes for me to remain abed, he bleeds me every third day, but there remains pain for me.”

He looks aghast.

“It is because I did not rest long enough, the birthing maester says. Pycelle agrees with the treatment,” she offers weakly, and he steps away from her. 

“Pycelle is a rat,” Oberyn huffs, “I know a man in the city much more suited to treating you. I will summon him today and rid you of that incompetent fool.”

“Thank you,” she whispers not knowing what else to say, and he nods. They stand looking at one another for a moment, both teetering on the edge of speaking but neither finding the words. Before she can work up the proper nerve or even make any sense of her emotions, he inclines his head and rushes away from her.

As if she were a steel torch and he a flint.

.  
.  
.

“Ser Jaime,” she calls, and the Young Lion turns puzzled from his place at Queen Rhaella’s door.

“Princess Rhaegar,” he greets, dropping to a knee and arising when she allows.

“Ser Jaime,” she smiles pleasantly, “might you accompany me for a stroll through the gardens? I have misplaced my guard, it seems."

Actually she was meant to be in the nursery with the children and had no guard assigned. But those were merely details.

“Your Grace,” he nodded, and followed her closely. When they came to the garden Queen Rhaella tended, she summoned him directly to her side, and slid her arm in his. He did not blush or stammer as men normally did when she bestowed upon them any favor, but he did return her smile with a shy one of his own. _Not entirely immune, then._ If young Jaime loved a woman he had been denied, as Arthur thought he might, his loyalty was one of the mind rather than the body.

“I fear, Ser Jaime, that I have been remiss towards you.”

“Princess?” Jaime questions. “How might you be remiss towards me?”

She squeezes his arm gently. “You know, of all the little children brought around the Keep in your father’s years as hand, you were one of the few I enjoyed.”

He scowls. “You are too kind, Your Grace.”

“Your facial expression disagrees, Ser.”

“Well,” he shrugs, “you never took much interest in me. Much to my Lord Father’s dismay.”

“It seems we have both disappointed Lord Tywin, then.” 

He looks at her sharply, slipping away and out of her grasp. Clearly sensitive to any mention of his family, a weakness he wore on his sleeve. “My father respects the call of service to the King.”

“And you?” she stops in the clearing they have found themselves in, turning her eyes onto him. He shrinks a bit from the intensity of her gaze.

“Do you respect your King, Ser Jaime?” she repeats, significantly softer.

“Of course, my Princess. His Grace is just.” Jaime’s jaw is strung so tight it resembles a bow, drawn to its limit in anticipation of a clean kill.

“Is he? My father is just? I think he is not,” Rhaegar says dangerously. If Jaime is shocked at her words he does not show it. “But you are entitled to your opinion, of course.” She continues walking and he returns to his place beside her.

There is a veranda ahead of them that offers a pleasing view of the bay. She shoos the servants away and leans back against the railing, once more fixing Jaime in her sights.

He is but seven and ten, impressively tall and arrogant, heartbreakingly beautiful. Maidens surely lose their hearts to him every day, but there are not rumors of him favoring a single one. Lyanna thought him interesting, but they were of an age and shared the same irreverence.

_And to think, you might have been mine by rights. But now I must earn you another way._

“Why did you swear to the Kingsguard?” It is a question she is genuinely curious about.

He shrugs again. His flippancy leaves much to be desired. “My King commanded me.”

“Your brothers would say you wished for it before that.”

He frowns in response.

“You do not care for your sworn brothers?” she probes.

“They treat me like an idiot,” he snorts, then remembers himself, “Your Grace. But it is no issue. I know I am young to have been inducted to the ranks of the white cloaks.”

“You are competent, though. I have seen it, and Ser Arthur attests to it.”

The mention of Arthur soothes Jaime as much as it rankles Rhaegar.

“Ser Arthur flatters me.”

“He would never lower himself to flatter anyone,” she deadpans, unable to insist on her white knight’s honesty just yet. She lets the silence sit for a moment, the breeze of the ocean mixed with the laughter of courtiers, her shoulders bare to the welcome warmth of the sun now that the final dregs of winter had faded away.

“Do you enjoy guarding my mother the Queen, Ser Jaime?”

He looks away in discomfort. “I have no ill to speak of Her Grace. She is kind.”

“Yes,” Rhaegar agrees. “There is something else I have heard about you, Ser Jaime. Would you like to hear it?”

“If Her Grace wishes to share it with me.”

“I have heard you gave your heart away to a woman wed, and swore your oath so you would never need to marry another.”

She gauges his reaction. He raises an eyebrow, believing her bluffing. Just like the Knight of the Laughing Tree, what is not obvious to others is clear to her, so his smugness is not unwarranted. Indeed it is only a hedge guess, but she will stake it regardless.

She continues conversationally, lulling him into a sense of comfort. “There is most often no truth to rumors, of course. Sometimes there is no more than kernel. And sometimes, the rumor is preferable to the truth. Were you aware I knew your mother, Ser Jaime?”

He shakes his head, wariness in his gaze.

“Yes, Lady Joanna. Only when I was a young girl, of course, before you quickened within her. She was a lady to my royal mother, and they corresponded. I was a voracious reader as a young one, but my governesses were ever telling me to stop my reading, else I ruin my eyesight. Thus I would sneak my way into the solars of my parents, looking over their letters and such. Some of them in the hand of your mother, often containing stories of you and your sister. She loved you so dearly, I am sure you know.”

Rhaegar cherishes this pavilion. It was bordered by cliffs and no hedges, so there was no possibility of eavesdropping. Here and the training yard were the only such places she knew of ever since Varys ruined the sanctity of the Godswood, privacy even Maegor’s tunnels did not offer.

Jaime remains silent as stone.

“There was even one letter where she asked my mother’s advice. On how to discourage affection between siblings. Inappropriate affection, such as incest.”

She schools her mien into one of understanding. His hand tightens on his sword but on his face lies conflict.

“I wonder if you asked her to run away with you. You would not be the first to offer a woman such a solution, nor the first to be turned away. How that must have pained you, for it is clear to me that you love her more dearly than anything.”

“You know nothing!” Jaime finally lashes out, going red. “What of it? What of all that? The Kingsguard is meant to be a noble calling, and I have done nothing to dishonor it. My only crime, my horrendous unforgivable crime, was being born a Lannister!”

Rhaegar holds up her hands in a peace gesture. “Calm, Ser. I mean no criticism. You know who my parents are, my grandparents before them, and my children after me. I only mean for you to see that if your Lord father ever underestimated me, you must not take the same liberty.”

His shoulder sag, his features uncertain as to what she truly means. She selects a different method. 

“Your sworn brothers do not treat you like an idiot, Ser. They treat you like a child, because you act like one. You treat Court with the disdain that the son of Tywin Lannister might do, but you are not that boy any longer. You are a man of the Kingsguard now.”

He laughs harshly. “No one knows this better than I, Your Grace.”

“Do you regret it?”

His jaw flexes. “Do you wish to release me upon your ascension, Princess?”

Rhaegar chuckles. “No, Ser Jaime. I wish to see you rise to be one of, if not the, deadliest members of your brotherhood. But you are wasting away in your assignment presently, and that will not do.” 

She motions for him to come closer, which he hesitantly does. “Let me ask you again, do you enjoy guarding my mother the Queen?”

“No,” he confesses with nothing left to lose, “I hate it, Your Grace. The Queen is kind to me, kinder than anyone else in this place, and I merely stand by while she suffers. It is...it seems...unfair.”

“Yes,” Rhaegar agrees, “and she is merely your liege. Imagine if she were your mother.”

Jaime is silent.

“I wish you to know that we are not all standing by, Ser Jaime. The Kingsguard are good men, every one, but you are men nonetheless and you will often find yourself in conflict.” She rises to her full height, barely a head shorter than him, “I only ask you, when you have such feelings, that you understand you have a friend in me. You must know this, good Ser, for if you do not have friends you may rely on you will awaken one day to find you have been eaten alive.”

“Why are you telling me this? Surely not out of affection for me,” he asks skeptically.

“Because the ruler of Westeros is only as strong as their Kingsguard. If I am so blessed, Ser Jaime, your sword will one day be pledged to me, and so I strive to be worthy of your service.”

Ser Jaime seemed to consider that for a moment, and even though her main endeavor was to ensure he would respond to her before Aerys, she meant her words nonetheless. It was her duty to rule fair and well, the responsibility thrust upon her. She had once resented it truthfully, but she was much too far in to harbor doubts any longer.

Finally, he bows his head. “I wish for that as well, Your Grace.” Much like Lyanna, he cannot hide when he is being sincere.

Over the next few weeks, Oswell reports to her that the Lannister boy appears ‘less of a shit’ and is instead ‘constantly fucking underfoot.’ Lord Commander Gerold approves of the change in attitude, and when Rhaegar requests he guard her, the burden of remaining with Queen Rhaella in the night is lifted from his shoulders. 

That does not mean it is not occurring, of course. That is never far from Rhaegar. The mind is a strange thing—Rhaegar has never witnessed the suffering of her mother herself, but she conjures a thousand imagined scenarios where she _sees_ and _hears_ and _knows._ Perhaps if she were not a woman, it would not pain her so much to think of it, but the thought of a man forcing his way inside her and taking his pleasure from her pain rattles her.

For all their faults and rages, neither Arthur nor Oberyn had even hurt her. 

Rhaella bleeds in her third moon, although the babe remains within her, and for once Aerys agrees to send her to Dragonstone when Rhaegar reasons that he would not wish to see yet another dead child. It is cruel to even insinuate this, but she finds there is nothing she is above if it means protecting her family.

Viserys goes with her, Barristan to guard them, and Rhaegar sees them off one blustery morning.

 _I should be Queen when you return,_ Rhaegar prays when she kisses the forehead of her little brother, who wails at being taken away from her. _It is good that you be far away when that happens. May your memories of our father fade with your childhood._  
.  
.  
.

Oberyn was correct when he said that he knew a man better situated to assist her than the maesters of the Red Keep. This stout man has several rotted teeth and his clothes are filthy, but his tone is warm and fatherlike. His knowledge of tonics and ingredients was far beyond the pale. Rhaegar asked him questions the entire time he was present, and the strangely endearing man happily chattered away. 

He set Rhaegar at ease, and she would have given her gratitude to her husband if she ever saw him long enough.

He was avoiding her, that was clear. _Oberyn Martell, afraid of desiring his wife_ , she reflects. Jaime looks at her strangely when she laughs to herself.

She desired him, she had accepted that at least. Perhaps she always had. A happy marriage was the stuff of dreams and she had never truly seen one but they existed, surely. With the cloud of Arthur alleviated for a time, it was easier to see clearly.

When she was summoned to dinner with Aerys and Oberyn, she took care to prepare, donning a dress woven of black silk and red satin, inlaced pearls and rubies matching the necklace she chose for the evening. It had belonged to Queen Daenaera once, a hand-chosen token of love from her publicly reticent husband. 

With five children, he could not have been that reticent, she supposes.

She paints her eyelids with the thin sheen that was commonplace in Lys, her lips with the maroon paint Rhaenyra Targaryen had once favored from a wealthy Pentoshi magister’s importing business.

Prince Oberyn comes to escort her, and his eyes linger on her figure. She found she was curious, or more than curious as to whether what occurred in the Sept was a mere happenstance or a true admission of something deeper, and his approbative hot hand on her waist does nothing to discourage her wondering. 

“What are you up to?” he asks her with a sideways smirk.

“Merely looking the part,” she shrugs, unwilling to give the game away just yet. Oswell and Lewyn follow them closely, so she says no more.

He opens the door, and Aerys is already seated, huffing and puffing that they are late, they have no respect, and onwards. Rhaegar apologizes for them both, Oberyn’s briefly good mood drained completely. 

Aerys motions they sit, an unnatural glee in his eyes. She would have heard if he burned a person, she thinks uneasily as she sits to his right, Oberyn to his left. A servant came to offer her spiced wine, which she accepted and sipped from sparingly. 

Oberyn sat still as a stone and touched neither food not drink as Aerys probed him with fresh new taunts.

“We thought to make you a true Dornish dinner, but when the kitchen wenches went to rip the tongues from the lizards the little beats bit their fingers off! I suppose snakes such as you have tricks to avoid such fates.”

“We kill the lizards first. A steel rod between the the eyes does the work,” Oberyn replies, his smile an excuse to bare his teeth.

“There is other of our fare we can offer you,” Aerys simpers, “but my Spider tells me you already sample them. Rhaegar, do you please your husband so little that he must find whores?”

Rhaegar takes another sip of wine. It was been long since she drank last, and she already finds herself lightheaded, her stomach in knots from the short conversation they have had.

“Your Grace, I am accustomed to men having mistresses. Your own was oft present at Court, and my mother the Queen rarely objected.”

“Do not speak of that whore!” Aerys screeches, and Rhaegar apologizes. The memory of the woman’s head on a spike is not so far past as to be a simple subject of conversation. 

The words between them do not improve as time passes, and Rhaegar assents to the next course simply to end this sordid affair sooner. The earthy mushrooms ease the tightness in her chest, although her head remains dizzy. She takes another drink of wine, her throat feeling dry suddenly.

“Eat, my Prince,” Aerys urges Oberyn, who picks up a fork as if it is his beloved spear, stabbing his own mushroom and swallowing it whole. 

“Drink, too,” the King insists. Oberyn gulps down a drink of wine obediently, but purses his lips immediately.

“What vintage might this be, Your Grace?” he asks, sniffing the notes of it. Rhaegar feels as if her head is spinning, placing a hand on the table so she does not fall. How strange, she has not been truly drunk since she was ten and four or so, but now she is feeling the effects of over consumption after a mere half a glass…

“It was made just for you,” Aerys preens.

Everything happens so fast. Oberyn stands suddenly, sweeping the remnants of his glass into the face of Aerys and slamming the goblet into his nose. There is a sickening crunch and a shriek, which draws Ser Darry and Lord Commander’s Gerold swords free from their sheaths.

“Rhaegar, put your fingers down your throat! It’s poison,” Oberyn yells the command at her, after he punches Ser Jonothor in the face and stumbles towards Aerys.

Rhaegar collapses from her seat, but she does as she is bid, choking and gasping around her own fingers, bile releasing onto the stone floors. Her chest seizes up and she can't get enough air.

It isn’t enough, she thinks distantly. The thud of Oberyn’s body onto the cold hard ground comes moments before her own.  
.  
.  
.

Waking from poison is nothing like waking from slumber, is the first thought Rhaegar identifies. It was more like waking after birth, or waking after a beating. Each part of her body required focused thought to move, every muscle realigning to it’s proper order, one after the other. The soreness, the pain, it came little by little, each it’s own discovery. Consciousness bloomed like a rose—like a bruise.

She is in the solar attached to the dining chambers, kept close to the Throne Room for immediate reception of emmissaries or other guests of import requiring privacy. 

Only Aerys sat with her, stroking his beard and gazing into the roaring fire.

“Prince Oberyn,” she croaks, needing to know. 

“Your concern touches me, daughter. He lies sleeping yet. Soon he will find his final rest, I imagine.”

“Your Grace,” Rhaegar begs, tears forming in her eyes. Additional bile rises in her, and she spends it on the carpet. “Father, why would you do this? He is the father of my children. You chose him for me.”

“I did, yes,” Aerys replies, uncharacteristically soft, “I did my duty by you, Rhaegar. Did I not? I loved you more than I ever loved another.”

“You never did,” she spit back, unable to pretend any longer. 

It was all too much. If Oberyn was dead, that ended everything. There would be no Great Council, there would only be war. She had failed in her task, she had failed them all; Rhaenys and Aegon, Mother, Viserys, Lyanna, Oswell and Prince Doran, Oberyn most fatally, anyone who had ever believed in her. 

And Arthur, who had sought to protect her all this time. He had been right about Aerys after all, about everything. 

“I did!” Aerys screams, standing with his hair and eyes feral, nails bleeding with how tightly they were clenched. “You never wanted for a single thing! And you repay me with _treason_!”

Her heart felt as if it stopped. _He knew._

“No, I would never,” she insists, but he thrust a letter in her face.

How could he have this? _How could he?_ She took every precaution, phrasing it delicately and sending it to Lord Tyrell by rider, and Lady Olenna had replied to it with words that would damn her alongside Rhaegar, how could it be that he had this?

There was only one explanation. There was only one web that stretched so far, only one spider that could catch a fly a thousand miles away. 

Aerys slapped her across the face when she opened her mouth to say something, anything, claim a forgery or a witch’s work. He grabbed her hair and pulled her, dragging her back into the room where the table was still set, her vomit still laying upon the ground. 

Nobody had been in or out. Sers Gerold and Jonothor stood vigil over Oberyn, whose chest blessedly still rose and fell. She did not know much of poisons, was it still possible to stop the effects? She did not even know the name of the poison, was there a way to know just from the smell or taste described in some tome somewhere?

Aerys let go of her locks and spoke to Gerold instead.

“Commander of my Kingsguard, finest knight in all the Seven Realms,” he boasted, clapping his bony hands together, “bring me the head of the traitor that lies before you.”

“Stop!” Rhaegar begs and attempts to reason, “I thought the poison would kill him. Why behead him? You can claim he passed away in his sleep this way, and appease Dorne.” She was only buying time, but it earned her another slap.

“Stupid girl, the poison was only meant to make you sleep! I would not kill you without speaking to you first. Now Ser Gerold, you will do as I command.”

Gerold looked at the door, as if sensing Prince Lewyn standing just beyond it. He looked at Ser Jonothor as well, who seems equally perplexed. And finally, he looked at Rhaegar, his hand on the pommel of his sword, bringing it out slowly.

The buzzing and screaming of her thoughts clamber all over one another, ripping apart her senses. For all that strife, panic gives rise to clarity.

All Rhaegar needs is a moment.

She foregoes titles, and entreats the man directly. “ _Gerold._ ” He gazes upon her, balancing the tip of his blade against that soft throat of her husband, that precious throat, the throat she needed protect.

“Please don’t,” she cries, letting tears fall. 

He hesitates. “I serve the King,” he replies, with iron tones of a man who did not want to do this thing. But it didn’t truly matter what he wanted.

All she needed was for him to hesitate.

She gathers her strength and pushes off her feet, slamming her body into the door and opening it wide from impact, running as fast as her sluggish legs would take her. She could outrun the Kingsguard in heavy armor, she knew that much, and when Aerys screams of _seize her! Seize her now!_ permeated the hallway, she yelled for Oswell and Prince Lewyn to follow her. 

She could outrun them, but not for long with her body so weak, she knew as the clanging of all four Kingsguard hunted her. Aerys remained screaming, and his voice was only becoming louder, so he was on her trail her as well. 

_I need a weapon_ , she thinks deliriously. If she burned in all Seven Hells for kinslaying, so it would be, but if Aerys lived another day her and her children would not.

She had sat the Iron Throne enough times in the past moons to know there was a loose blade halfway up. She often fiddles with it while hearing petitioners, and if she used all her strength it might come loose, she hopes. The Throne Room was closer—her chambers were far, as was the armory. 

There is moonlight streaming through the windows of the Throne Room. Rhaegar trips over her own dress, landing hard on her knees. The collision with the tiles rattles her, and she scrambles to get up.

A gloved hand yanks her arm, bringing her to her feet.

“Prince Lewyn,” she breathes, balancing on him and trying to catch a breath of air. “Oberyn, he…”

“I know,” Lewin replies, voice more level than she can believe. “He told me in the Sept that day to protect you before him, Princess. I will see you safe, I promise.”

“Princess, you must flee!” Oswell yells, skidding into the room with his blade drawn. The clang of it against another has Lewyn tearing away from her and pushing her forward. 

She makes it to the foot of the throne when her father’s voice rises and echoes in the grand room. 

“Kill your false brothers! I will have their heads!” 

Steel clashes mixed with grunts and groans ring through the Hall and Rhaegar climbs the great Throne on her hands and knees, blurred vision forcing her to rely completely on memory.

A rough grab around her ankle pulls her so her head slams onto the unforgiving metal beneath her, stunning her for a moment. She is close, she can tell, but she must keep climbing, struggling back up to her elbows.

It is useless because when she has pulled herself half an armlength she is slammed down once more, rendered speechless by the shock. Her hand glances over the wobbly blade, but she feels herself being turned onto her back before she can truly grasp it.

“You are a traitor and a slut!” Aerys bellows into her face, his spittle flying into her face. Rhaegar struggles against him viciously, and her father, the man who had not spent a day in the training yard with her, the man who had not gotten his own hands bloody ever since he returned from Duskendale—that same man punches her in the stomach. She gapes at him in pain, and that only spurns him on to do it again, and again, and again, and again. 

Blood pools in her mouth while her lungs beg for relief. She reaches out blindly for the weapon, her very last hope, and it is just close enough for her to grab.

Below them, the sound of a man gurgling after his throat has been slit is inescapable. Rhaegar cries out in grief for whoever that might be, for even Gerold and Jonothor were not dead in her heart just yet. _They are good men, and they swore an oath._

“I was never going to kill you, only stop you!” Rhaegar yells, hitting her free fist against his shoulder.

“You betrayed me!” he seethes, even as she feels something dripping down her leg. Blood most likely. His or hers, she did not know.

“You were tearing the Realm apart, Father,” Rhaegar entreats him to see, for once to just _see_ what he was doing. “You were tearing our family apart! You left me no choice, but even then I never wanted you to suffer!”

Aerys laughs in her face, cruel and mad. “I did it all for _you_ , you pathetic girl. You were never strong enough to rule! You do not see that _snakes_ surround us everywhere we go. I will burn down this city and dance on it's ashes with or without you!”

Rhaegar sobs. Finally, finally the blade chips off and comes into her hand. Someone calls her name from below, perhaps Oswell, she cannot tell. Bells are ringing in her ears and black spots spin out in front of her. 

“I never wanted it to come to this,” she tells him, demon that he is situated atop her, and she means it. Killing him would damn her—she would forever be a kinslayer. 

But she could not be a coward now, and she had to see it done. There was no turning back.

He sees the blade as she brings it down and squeals, holding her wrist in an unbreakable grip. She knees him in the stomach and headbutts him, which sets stars into her eyes. 

She elbows him and he closes a hand around her throat, gripping it so hard that his nails shred into her skin.

In the end she is not strong enough, Rhaegar despairs as the breath is stolen from her lungs. She thinks of Rhaenys and Aegon, sleeping peaceful last she saw them. Oberyn, eyes blazing with urgency when he told her of the poison. Lyanna, fierce and proud in her armor; Arthur, tall and strong in his.

Blood drips onto her face and neck. Aerys slumps onto her, his grip slackening and allowing her precious inhalation.

She loses all her senses for a time, and only comes back when she is cradled in a pair of arms, her limbs jostling as they run.

“Wait,” she croaks, and tries desperately to open her eyes.

“I cannot, Princess,” the haggard tones of young Jaime Lannister ring in her ears, “you are bleeding something fierce. You need a maester.”

“No,” she murmurs weakly, raising a shaky hand. “I've had enough of those maesters...there is a man in Flea Bottom. Marwyn is his name. He lives on a ship, he can treat poisons. Please you must find him, Oberyn needs him.”

“I will send word,” Jaime promises as he kicks open the door to Pycelle’s chambers, laying her on the examination table as the old man in his nightclothes splutters at the sight in front of him. 

“Jaime,” she calls, after he has dispatched assorted pages to find Marwyn, and he rushes to her side. More commotion begins when the sagging body of Prince Oberyn is brought in and laid beside her. She touches his hand and holds it as tightly as she can, which is barely at all. The feeling of his warm hand in hers comforts her.

Rhaegar holds onto awareness as long as she is able, until Marwyn is rushed in. Pycelle goes red in anger and screams his protests, but Rhaegar cannot concentrate enough to discern what is being said precisely.

“Jaime,” she calls again, and the young knight comes even as the poultice is applied to her discoloured stomach.

“My father?” 

His face comes into focus above her, grimacing. “It was you or him, Your Grace. The Kingsguard… they fought one another. Only Prince Lewyn survives, but he is short an arm.”

“He must be treated for infection,” she murmurs, unable to keep her eyes open any longer.

“Yes, Princess,” Jaime agrees, although he sounds doubtful.

Marwyn interrupts them, urging her to drink a tonic. When she has swallowed it all, she licks her lips, feelings her senses bleed away. The last thing she hears is Marwyn’s voice of warm honey.

“If the King is indeed dead, then she is no Princess, boy. She is a Queen.”

Rhaegar sleeps for seven days and seven nights.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, reviews mean the world to me :)


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